HE Mo JNT FHlLip GlLBERJ H/\|VIERJOH. THE MOUNT AND AUTUN THE MOUNT NARRATIVE OF A VISIT TO THE SITE OF A GAULISH CITY ON MONT BEUVRAY WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE NEIGHBORING CITY OF AUTUN BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON AUTHOR OF "THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE," "A PAINTER'S CAMP," "ROUND MY HOUSE," " WENDERHOLME," "A SUMMER VOYAGE ON THE RIVER SAONE," ETC. BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 1897 Copyright, 1897, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. STACK ANNEX fol H3 CONTENTS. THE MOUNT. CHAPTER I. PAGB MOUNT BEUVRAY DEJEUNER WITH A LEARNED ANTIQUARY His HOUSE His LOVE OF THE PAST AND DISLIKE OF NEWSPAPERS WE TRAVEL TOGETHER TO THE MOUNT THE VILLAGE OF MONTHELON STORY OF A SAINT THE CHA- TEAU WHERE SHE LIVED THE CHURCH OF MONTHELON ROMANESQUE COUNTRY CHURCHES ANECDOTES OF A PRIEST FISHPOND MADE USELESS BY THE INVASION OF A PLANT TOWER OF VAUTHEAU AN ANTIQUARY'S FANCY THE FOUNTAIN OF THE WIVRE A LEGEND .... i CHAPTER II. ST. LfiGER-sous-BEUVRAY A LAKE AND PICTUR- ESQUE SCENERY ANCIENT CHESTNUTS WOLVES AND HYDROPHOBIA DREADFUL HAVOC COMMIT- TED BY A MAD WOLF A HUNT ESTABLISHED BY EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY BEAUTIFUL SCENERY THE MOUNT SEEN NEAR OLD HOUSES AND NEW ROADS ANALYSIS OF ARTISTIC QUALITIES IN AN OLD BUILDING COCOTTE TRANSFORMED vi Contents. PACK INTO A SADDLE-HORSE THE AUTHOR REACHES THE SUMMIT OF THE MOUNT AND ORDERS DIN- NER DESCRIPTION OF THE ANTIQUARY'S MOUN- TAIN ESTABLISHMENT His SERVANT PAUCHARD A FOUNTAIN AND A WINE CELLAR 25 CHAPTER III. A REASON FOR THE ANTIQUARY'S SOJOURNS ON THE MOUNT ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS THE MOUNT FORMERLY THE SlTE OF A STRONG HlLL ClTY ANTIQUARIAN DIGGINGS OUR MANNER OF LIVING ON THE MOUNT THE CHIMNEY INSCRIPTIONS TAPESTRY A SERENADE TO THE ANTIQUARY THE AUTHOR'S FIRST VISIT TO THE MOUNT . 41 CHAPTER IV. OUR CUSTOM OF TAKING A WALK AT MIDNIGHT THE PLATEAU OF THE BEUVRAY THE ANTI- QUARY BUILDS AN ORATORY THE MAY FAIR ON THE BEUVRAY TOURNAMENTS HELD THERE TRADITIONS OF ROMAN WARFARE AMONGST THE PEASANTRY PHANTOM OF A WHITE HORSE THE PHANTOM HUNTER AND HOUNDS MONAS- TERY ON THE BEUVRAY OUR HABITS ON THE MOUNT MONT BLANC SEEN AT SUNRISE, 157 MILES OFF VIEWS FROM MOUNTAINS AT SUN- RISE 51 CHAPTER V. OUR FIRST BREAKFAST PAUCHARD'S SOUP PEDES- TRIAN POWERS OF THE ANTIQUARY EXPLORA- Contents. vii PAGE TION OF THE MOUNT THE GAULISH RAMPARTS INTERIOR EARTHWORKS STRUCTURE OF A GAUL- ISH WALL, AS DESCRIBED BY CESAR, CONFIRMED BY OUR OBSERVATIONS GAULISH BLACKSMITH'S SHOP GAULISH ENAMELLER SURPRISING QUAN- TITY OF AMPHORA ARRANGEMENT OF HOUSES LARGE MANSION NAME OF THE ANCIENT CITY MOST PROBABLY BlBRACTE REMARKABLE DE- FICIENCY OF CESAR'S AS A MILITARY NARRATOR POVERTY OF DESCRIPTION IN HIS WRITINGS . . 64 CHAPTER VI. ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTEREST OF A RAILWAY-CUTTING THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS NAPO- LEON III. His SUBSIDY FOR THE EXCAVATIONS ON THE MOUNT LOCAL SPITE AND ANIMOSITY BAD FAITH AND INTENSE PREJUDICE THE GREAT WATER ARGUMENT ABUNDANCE OF WATER ON ' THE BEUVRAY LETTERS AGAINST THE ANTIQUARY ADDRESSED TO GREAT PERSONAGES PRINCE BlS- MARCK THE INFLICTION OF TOURISTS ASTON- ISHING INDISCRETION OF FASHIONABLE TOURISTS CONDUCT OF A PARTY OF NOBILITY MISBE- HAVIOR OF TWO TITLED LADIES THE COUNT OF PARIS 80 CHAPTER VII. THE ANTIQUARY'S HOSPITALITY PLEASANT SOCIETY ON THE MOUNT AN ESCAPED HOSTAGE SELF- DEVOTION OF TWO YOUNG PRIESTS DISCOVERY OF A GAULISH FIREPLACE WE LIGHT A FIRE THEREON EVENTS THAT HAD PASSED BETWEEN TWO LIGHTINGS OF THE FIRE THE ANTIQUARY viii Contents. PAGB DELIVERS AN ELOQUENT LECTURE AND SINGS OLD BALLADS THE AUTHOR TRANSLATES POETRY DELIGHTFUL EVENING PAUCHARD'S BEAUTIFUL LEGEND OF THE NIGHTINGALE "LA PIERRE DE LAWIVRE" ITS LEGEND 96 CHAPTER VIII. OUR PEDESTRIANISM A HAMLET NEAR THE MOUNT AUTHOR TAKEN FOR A PRUSSIAN SPY ART GENERALLY SUPPOSED TO BE AN ABSURD BUSINESS BEAUTY OF THE OLD HAMLET LA ROCHE MILLAY THE CHATEAU AND GARDEN THERE A NIGHT ADVENTURE ANOTHER RETURN FROM THE MOUNT WANDERINGS IN SEARCH OF AN OLD PAIR OF FIRE-DOGS THE CHATEAU DU JEU ITS GARDEN AND AVENUE CHATEAU OF A SMALL SQUIRE MANNER OF LIFE OF THE SMALL SQUIRES IN FORMER TIMES WE SUP AND SLEEP IN AN UNINHABITED HOUSE THE PIED-A-TERRE BENEFICIAL ACTIVITY WILD BOARS AND OTHER ANIMALS ON THE BEUVRAY ... . , . . 112 AUTUN. I. INTRODUCTION 143 II. THE CATHEDRAL 157 III. THE LAPIDARY MUSEUM AND THE ROMAN GATES 185 IV. HOUSES 199 THE MOUNT. CHAPTER I. MOUNT BEUVRAY DEJEUNER WITH A LEARNED ANTI- QUARY His HOUSE His LOVE OF THE PAST AND DISLIKE OF NEWSPAPERS WE TRAVEL TOGETHER TO THE MOUNT THE VILLAGE OF MONTHELON STORY OF A SAINT THE CHATEAU WHERE SHE LIVED THE CHURCH OF MONTHELON ROMANESQUE COUNTRY CHURCHES ANECDOTES OF A PRIEST FISHPOND MADE USELESS BY THE INVASION OF A PLANT TOWER OF VAUTHEAU AN ANTIQUARY'S FANCY THE FOUNTAIN OF THE WIVRE A LEGEND. the western side of the valley or basin of Autun, rises a massive hill, about i, 800 feet above the level of the plain, and 2,700 above the sea-level. It plays a great part in all effects of sunset, being remote enough to take fine blue or purple color in certain conditions of the atmosphere. The distance from my house is about ten miles as the crow flies, or it is twenty miles by road, so that the hill may be reached in a drive, and 2 The Mount. I go there from time to time, yet not so fre- quently as a certain friend of mine, who has reasons of his own for taking an especial interest in Mount Beuvray. The best way to initiate the reader into the peculiar charms and characteristics of the Mount, is to take him with me, if he will kindly pardon the liberty, and let the place come upon him gradually, as it would upon an actual traveller. He shall, however, in addition, possess certain advantages which are only shared by very few and highly-favored pilgrims of the Mount. Before we start, I will just whet the reader's appetite with the remark, which he will find fully justified before we have done, that Mount Beuvray is, much more than any other hill or mountain that I have either visited or read about, a place of peculiar characteristics. It has not the grandeur of my old friend, Ben Cruachan, and, as for height, its whole eleva- tion is but the difference between Mont Blanc and the Aiguille Verte; yet the impression that Ben Cruachan leaves is essentially what you will receive after climbing several other Highland mountains, and the exploration of glaciers on Mont Blanc has just the same The Mount. 3 kind of interest as the exploration of glaciers in other regions of the Alps. But every one who knows the Beuvray remembers it as we remember some very original being, for there are not two Beuvrays, either in France or elsewhere. There lives at Autun a friend of mine, who shall be called in these pages the Antiquary ; and sometimes we arrange to go to the Beuvray together. Let me take one of these excursions as an example of the rest. It has sometimes been said that the French are an inhospitable nation, but if this is a rule it is a rule with a good many very striking exceptions, and the Antiquary is one of them. It is settled that I am to go and fetch him for a drive to the Beuvray, and take my four- wheeled dog-cart, because he has some impedi- menta of awkward shape and size which he is anxious to transport to the Mount. These turn out to be a deal table about seven feet long, with trestles, and a few little personal ef- fects. As for me, I too have things to carry namely, a knapsack and general artistic equip- ment for the purpose of studying from nature. We intend to stay nearly a week on the Mount, so I burden myself in addition with a 4 The Mount. small sack of corn and several trusses of hay. The deal table with the trestles, the trusses of hay, and my saddle are arranged and corded behind the dog-cart, giving it anything but an elegant appearance ; indeed it may be doubted whether an English gentleman would have courage to drive through an English town on a vehicle loaded in that manner, but as we two are people who have our own purposes in view, and regard public opinion with the most contemptuous indifference, we do not trouble our minds with reflections about what the French Mrs. Grundy may say. The Anti- quary's town residence, where I go to fetch him, is one of the best in the little city. You enter the garden under the shadow of a great porte-coctiere with oak doors large enough to admit a wain of hay, and the porter's lodge in the sides of the structure and above it. Once inside, you find yourself in a garden over- shadowed by magnificent trees, most notably by one gigantic acacia, certainly the finest I ever beheld. My little mare, whose name is Cocotte, is unharnessed and led to the stable through a building which is quite a museum, being full of massive remnants of antiquity, such as capitals of columns, big stones with The Mount. 5 inscriptions, old fireplaces, and niches, and other objects of embarrassing dimensions that antiquaries love to collect, and don't know where to put when they have collected them. Cocotte passes through the museum alike without damaging anything or observing any- thing, and arrives at last at a certain stall in the stable, already perfectly well known to her. The coach-house, too, is crammed with anti- quities, for the Antiquary does not keep a car- riage, partly because it would turn out his big stones, the ugliest of which is lovelier in his eyes than the most elegant of Parisian vehicles. The Antiquary has a large state dining- room adorned with old carved oak and a choice collection of old French and Italian ware, but he has also a smaller dining-room, for ordinary occasions, furnished in the sim- ple way that the French people like for a " room to eat in." Here we have a little dejeuner as a preparation for the labors of the day. It is now ten o'clock ; we have been both hard at work since six, and are ready to do honor to our repast. A Frenchman always seems gayer and brighter at dejeuner than at dinner-time, and 6 The Mount. he is never so hospitable as at a dejeuner with- out ceremony. Ours passes as pleasantly as can be ; we talk of the journey before us, settle the detail of our little arrangements, and per- haps enjoy the good cookery and perfect ser- vice all the better from the knowledge that we have a rougher existence before us, and- are bidding a temporary farewell to these re- finements of an elaborate civilization. My host is one of those few and enviable people who have managed, in their own pecu- liar way, to lead the ideal life. It may not be exactly your ideal, reader ; it is not exactly mine ; for it is the peculiarity of every truly ideal life that it is strongly individual, and not fashioned on a model that would precisely fit anybody else. My host lives in the past ; in him the historical and antiquarian sense pre- dominates over the feeling that goes with the current of the world's diurnal existence. I have often seen him read old books, but never a newspaper, and once I asked him whether he ever did read such a thing as a newspaper, when he answered " No," with the greatest decision. History is his delight, politics his abhorrence. He does not see that the news- paper, amongst its tiresome discussions of The Mount. 7 small matters that will be forgotten in a few weeks or months, does really at the same time contain the history of the current year, so that if the historical sense embraced the present as well as the past, it would read The Times as well as Tacitus. Forgetting one day that my friend never opened a newspaper, I happened to make an allusion to the siege of Carthagena, when he told me that he was not aware that Carthagena had been besieged at all, or spe- cially occupied by the Spanish communards, and he did not seem grateful for the informa- tion, but, if anything, slightly put out by hav- ing to hear what had been read by another person in a newspaper. Some contemporary events do, however, reach him by their very loudness. If a powder-magazine exploded in the next street, he would probably become aware of the circumstance in the privacy of his own study, and in the same manner he got to know that there was a war between France and Prussia, and that the capital of France was surrounded by a German army. Since the departure of the Germans he has heard from some friends of his that Thiers has been succeeded by Marshal MacMahon, and, to my great surprise, he evidently was aware that 8 The Mount. the Due de Broglie was atone time Prime Minister. He knew something of the attempt to restore Henri V., but that was because a near relation of his was a friend of the exiled Prince, and in correspondence with Frohsdorf, whither he went on a pilgrimage, to be close to the person of his sovereign. It is needless to add that the contemporary history of neigh- boring countries is a blank in my friend's mind, but he knows nearly all that is to be known about their condition from the time of Caesar to the end of the fifteenth century. Yet although my friend's knowledge of anti- quity is bought at the cost of this ignorance of the present, it is well worth the sacrifice, for thousands of people know the contents of the newspapers, for one who keeps alive the record of bygone generations. If I want to learn the names of the men who composed the last French Ministry, the idlers in the nearest cafe can tell me ; but if I want accurate knowledge about some epoch in the past his- tory of the very locality where these idlers live, they cannot tell me. The human race may, therefore, well afford that a few scattered antiquaries here and there should be careless of the present that they may be careful of the The Mount. 9 too easily and readily forgotten past. It is they who, by labors of infinite patience, re- warded always by the ridicule of their neigh- bors, preserve the chain of the world's history and have even been so successful as to restore many a missing link. Not only is the Antiquary sufficiently inde- pendent of public opinion to remain content- edly ignorant of newspapers, but in his ways of life, as the reader will abundantly learn before he comes to the close of this narrative, my antiquarian friend has had the courage and wisdom to follow his own taste and gov- ern his expenditure on principles in harmony with his own character and pursuits. Thus, in his house, there are what may be called a set of state apartments, furnished as an artist with antiquarian tastes, or an antiquary with artistic tastes, might be expected to furnish them. There is a certain tendency towards magnificence here and there, but never of the vulgar kind, and every object has its character and history. No upholsterer had the furnish- ing of these rooms, but the owner gradually gathered round him things at the same time rich and beautiful and possessing some histori- cal interest. His drawing-rooms are, in fact, a io The Mount. museum that you may live in, or a habitation that you may study in. The mirrors are old Venetian glass with the rich Italian frame ; the time-piece is a curious example, and very elegant, of the earliest French workmanship of that kind ; the busts are antique marbles ; the books on the table are illuminated manu- scripts of the middle ages. But the real museum, for of course the Antiquary has a museum, consists of a large room and a gal- lery upstairs, full of accumulated treasures from antiquity down to the sixteenth century, but especially and peculiarly rich in remnants of Gaulish workmanship and the workman- ship of the Roman occupants of Gaul. The whole of this has been gathered by and for the historical and artistic sense, never for vul- gar luxury, and, although the Antiquary has plenty of roomy armchairs covered with tap- estry or velvet, I have seen him, for a week together, use nothing but a hard wooden stool without either a cushion or a back to it. So with cookery; as the Antiquary is a giver of good dinners, he cannot in his town house do without the services of an accomplished cook, but anywhere else he is perfectly contented with a basin of soup or a piece of bread and The Mount. n an egg, and can alter all his habits as easily as a soldier accustomed to the changes and chances of war-time. This is a very uncom- mon faculty in a man of his age, for he is nearly sixty, especially when men so well advanced in life have every luxury at their command that self-indulgence pets itself with. After dejeuner we set off on our expedition, driving on a good road under a burning sun, with a fair landscape on every side in the freshness of the beginning of June. For me there is always plenty of entertainment in driving through a picturesque country even without a companion, but the pleasure is much enhanced when one has a companion able to appreciate everything on the way, and well acquainted with the history of the localities. The first village we came to, called Monthe- lon, is very celebrated in French ecclesiastical history as having been for some years the residence of an excellent lady whose reputation for goodness was so great that it survived her, and more than a hundred years after her death was still so powerful that Pope Clement XIII. canonized her as a saint. She was married to Christophe de Rabutin, Baron of Chantal, in 12 The Mount. 1592, and eight years afterwards her husband was accidentally killed by a friend of his when out hunting. He left her with six children, and she came to the chateau at Monthelon, where she stayed seven years and a half with her husband's father. Her early widowhood seems to have led to a remarkable religious development in her mind, and the rest of her life was passed in educating her family and attending to the poor. Saint Fran9ois de Sales came to Monthelon and told her of his project for the establishment of an order to be called the Order of the Visitation. She entered heartily into this scheme, and in 1610 left Monthelon to go to Annecy, that she might help in carrying it out practically. From all that I have been able to learn of her, she was one of those good women whom everybody must respect, notwithstanding religious differ- ences. Her memory is kept perfectly alive by her own church, and there are occasionally pilgrimages to Monthelon, though it is not so fashionable as Lourdes or Paray-le-Monial, because she was not so miraculous a person- age as Marie Alacoque, nor is Monthelon a place of miracles like Lourdes. It is a very interesting little place, however, and the The Mount. 13 chateau the good Baronne de Chantal lived in is still in general aspect quite what it was in her time. There is a chapel at the north end which in the interior is nothing but a narrow room, very high proportionately to its breadth, but the chapel has a belfry and but- tresses outside, as well as a porch, which give it an ecclesiastical aspect. These have been lately restored, in other words, the old belfry was pulled down and a new one built in its place, but this last is a faithful copy of the original. The spire is one of those that spread out suddenly at the bottom like the rim of a peaked hat. Another interesting architectural feature is an open gallery in the house itself which is simply a corridor left free to the air by an opening in the wall extending its whole length, the roof being here supported by short columns. It is surprising how very valuable is this simple device from the architectural point of view, as the columns catch the light and a broad shadow always lurks somewhere in the corridor itself. The staircase is exterior also up to the first floor, arrangements bor- rowed from southern custom, and convenient in the latitude only during a third of the year. It is pleasant in the summer evening or early 14 The Mount. morning to get a little fresh air as you pass from one room to another in the open, but not quite so agreeable when the cold blasts gather furiously in the corridor in the depth of a Morvan winter Seen from the opposite side, the chateau presents the usual appearance of houses of that class with massive round towers at the angles and large picturesque dormer windows in the roof; but notwithstanding its apparent size it is a most inconvenient place to live in. Some one suggested to me a few years ago that I might get it on lease; and the situation was very attractive, for it is in a lovely valley near a pure and beautiful stream, but although the house was not in very bad repair, and there were several large habitable rooms, the arrangement of them was so exces- sively inconvenient that we abandoned the idea after one visit. The place belongs to the Prince de Montholon, who takes an inter- est in its preservation, and it is inhabited at present by a farmer and dealer in bark for tanning, who leaves everything just as he found it. The tenant most to be dreaded for a place like this is a rich bourgeois with a pas- sion for neat windows, tidy slate roofs, and iron railings. The Mount. 15 There is a remarkable little church at Monthelon of the pure Romanesque type, which always seems to me the most suitable kind of architecture for a village church when there is not much money to be laid out. Unfortunately these little old Romanesque churches are rapidly disappearing all over the country, for whenever they are out of repair, and nothing is easier than to let an old structure fall into that state, the cure is seized with an ardent ambition to get rid of his old church altogether and build a gaunt new edifice in place of it, of the most meagre Gothic that poverty in money and poverty in ideas can together realize. What I like so much in the little old Romanesque buildings is their total absence of false pretension, their substantial strength, and their perfect snug- ness. The transition from the substantial old cottages, centuries old, to the little Ro- manesque church is so natural that the peasant must feel as much at home in one as in the other, whereas a church that seems as if it had been picked up in some new American town and set down again in the middle of a quaint old Morvan village is a glaring incongruity for the present. The 1 6 The Mount. only consolation is that in twenty years the villages will be as new and ugly as the churches. To my taste, however, there is nothing in village architecture to be compared with the chancel and apse of such a building as that at Monthelon, so simple and yet so complete, so substantial in rustic strength, and yet at the same time so full of satisfactions for the artistic sense in pleasant changes of curves in their perspective, and various light and shade. Even the priest himself, if he could but think so, looks far more effective when officiating in a tiny chancel that is like an oratory, than he ever can do under a lofty roof, make himself as gorgeous as he may. In the great cathedrals the effort of the Roman clergy to struggle against the over- whelming immensity of their architectural surroundings is never more than half suc- cessful ; the height of a man is not sufficient for the purpose, though he blaze with gold and jewels. The mitre and crosier add some- thing, the banner and cross still more, yet when all is done the priests look like mice on the floor of a room. There was an old priest at Monthelon who lived in great simplicity, but sometimes re- The Mount. 17 ceived visits from cures in the neighborhood. Two of these came to see him on one occa- sion and stayed to a frugal dejeuner. After they were gone, the old man fell asleep with his feet close to the blazing logs upon the hearth, and his wooden shoes unfortunately took fire ; but the cure went on sleeping still, and he did not awake until his feet were rather badly burnt. The incident in itself is at the same time very ludicrous and very painful, the idea of the cure reclining tran- quilly in his easy-chair whilst his wooden shoes were burning with the logs, is just one of those ideas that Goya would have delighted to illustrate in his fearful caricatures; but the matter did not end there. The popular rumor, always rather malicious about eccle- siastics, took up the matter in its own way, and set it abroad that the two cures who had been there to dejeuner had rewarded their entertainer by forcibly putting his feet into the fire in the fun of a drunken frolic. One of the two felt so hurt by the currency of these stories that he took the trouble to contradict them in the pulpit, but with a result entirely different from what he intended ; for, as he told me himself, the peasants who heard him 1 8 The Mount. went about saying that he had made a full confession. It is wonderful how difficult it is to correct a popular impression even in classes very superior to the French peasantry. 1 The old cure whose feet were burnt had some curi- ous oddities or originalities. He was fond of putting Latin into his sermons, a little bit at a time, his own Latin, not of the best. Here is an authentic extract in the original tongues, for of course it would be entirely spoilt by any attempt at translation. " Lorsque je paraitrai devant Notre Seigneur il me demandera ' Cure Monthelon ius ubi sunt bre- betis meis ' ce qui veut dire ' Cure de Monthelon ou sont mes brebis/ et moi je lui repondrai ' Betes je les ai trouv6es, betes je les ai laiss^es, et betes elles sont probablement encore.' " The good priest was not more complimen- tary in his French than classical in his Latin. 1 I remember a curious instance of this in England. There was an impression, amongst the upper classes, that insanity had been prevalent in a certain family, and this was asserted to be the case on the authority of a certain historian whose name was used as evidence ; yet that historian had never printed any assertion to that effect. In the same way, nothing is more common than for things to be believed to be in the Bible which are not in the Bible, though almost every Eng- lishman has a copy of it. The Mount. 19 After leaving this little village we came to a pond that had been intentionally dried up, and my companion told me the reason, which is worth mentioning. Somebody had planted in it an aquatic plant called cornuelle in French ; the botanical name of it is Trapa natans, and it belongs to the family of Haloragece. I am not aware that it has an English name. This plant produces an edible fruit, a sort of nut, from which comes another of its popular names, the chataigne cCeau, and the country people make use of it at home or carry it to market as a salable article of consumption. The fruit is farinaceous and sweet; it maybe made into a sort of porridge, and bread ap- pears to have been made from it in ancient times. The only objection to the plant is that, when once it has taken root in a pond, it soon gets possession of the whole water, which is entirely invaded and occupied by it. Nothing can be done with the pond after- wards except to drain it and cultivate the ground as a field, for even if after the lapse of years the place is put under water again the cornuelle reappears almost immediately, as some root fibres are sure to remain in the earth. The dry pond we passed had been 2O The Mount. permanently abandoned as a hopeless enter- prise, which says a good deal for the power of one aquatic weed in its contest against the energy of man ; for a fish-pond is a very pro- ductive property in this country, more pro- ductive than dry land when the land is not of the best quality and the pond can be made without too large an expenditure of capital on an expensive dam. The castle or tower of Vautheau, which we came upon rather later, is one of the most per- fect examples of the feudal castle in Burgundy. and the remaining tower is in that happy condition between repair and ruin when noth- ing has been spoiled for the eye, either by time or meddlesome repairs. The roof is still there, the door is still locked, but nobody lives in the rooms. The rest of the castle is a ruin. My companion the Antiquary proposed one of his brilliant ideas which he is quite the man to carry into execution. He proposed to rent the tower from its owner merely for the pleas- ure of furnishing one room perfectly with the old mediaeval things from his own collection, and if he does this, which I have good hopes he will, that room will produce quite perfectly the illusion of a return to the real middle The Mount. 21 ages, so far as the picturesque is concerned. He enumerated to me all the treasures that he could spare for its adornment, certainly mak- ing in the aggregate a much richer plenishing than the room ever knew in the times of its mighty seigneurs; for my friend proposed to himself, as people generally do in such pro- jects, rather the realization of an ideal than the literal restoration of a bygone reality. There are two good chambers in the tower that might be treated in this manner, and if ever the scheme is carried out, the Antiquary will possess a rare half-way house between his town residence and the Mount, dividing the distance just equally, and thus affording him an excellent excuse for sleeping in the midst of his treasures. It is an antiquary's fancy, but it might equally be a poet's fancy, or a painter's. The tower itself is a perfect un- spoiled gem, rich with its own beauty and the beauty of the -most magnificent ivy I ever beheld, whilst the cluster of old cottages near the castle, the elegant Renaissance pigeon tower with its dome and crown of columns, the magnificent chestnuts that abound in the neighborhood and the glorious breadths of landscape to be seen from there, would occupy 22 The Mount. a painter for many a summer's day. The poet or story-teller would find suggestions in the ancient history and legends of the place. Jacques, Sire de Vautheau, was a zealous Huguenot in times when it needed the heroic temper to profess any shade of Protestantism here, and he held preachings within the walls of his castle which were attended by " seven hundred gentlemen and damsels." It is said too, by historians of the opposite party, that in his zeal for his own faith he rode out frequently from Vautheau with a band of Calvinist sol- diers and pillaged the churches round about. Jean de Traves, of this family, made prisoner a bishop of Chalons in 1545 who was also the confessor of Cardinal de Medicis, on his way to the Council of Trent. But in 1653 the zeal of Protestantism must have come to an end in this family, for the Count of Vautheau was present at the solemn entry of a new bishop into Autun. Very near the castle, in a beautiful hollow, under the shade of magnifi- cent old trees lies a well bordered by wild- flowers, and, being thirsty, I went to this cool spring to drink. On this the Antiquary said, " Mind you take the diamond if the opportu- nity presents itself, but you must be quick The Mount. 23 and careful, or else your fate will be terrible." I thought, " Here is some old legend, but I can wait to hear it till I have slaked my thirst"; so, having drunk heartily of the pure cool water, I rejoined my friend and he re- sumed the subject of the diamond. " One of the most ancient legends in France is connected with that well where you have just been drinking, and the peasants all be- lieve in it firmly to this day. It is the foun- tain of the Wivre, 1 which is a supernatural serpent that always carries about with him a diamond of prodigious value. He comes to this well to drink, and whenever he does so he is obliged to lay down his diamond. Now if anybody happens to be there when the ser- pent comes, and is quick enough to seize the diamond just when the serpent is drinking, and get away with it before the serpent has slaked his thirst, then he will become the rich- est man in the whole world ; but if the Wivre perceives that he is robbed, he will instantly slay the unsuccessful thief. However, as you 1 Pronounced Vivre, of course, in French. I wonder if there is any connection between this word and the name of the heraldic monster Wivern. It appears highly probable that there must be some connection, as the words are so very nearly identical. 24 The Mount. have come back alive, and do not look as if you had just got possession of a great diamond, I infer that the Wivre did not happen to visit his well at the same time with you." The legend of the Wivre is very persistent in these regions, and reappears in other forms. It is the old story of the dragon or serpent guardian, whose treasures may not be got at without the utmost peril. We shall find the Wivre again elsewhere, at a distance from his well. The Mount. 25 CHAPTER II. ST. LtGER-sous-BEuvRAY. A LAKE AND PICTURESQUE SCENERY ANCIENT CHESTNUTS WOLVES AND HY- DROPHOBIA DREADFUL HAVOC COMMITTED BY A MAD WOLF A HUNT ESTABLISHED BY EPISCOPAL AU- THORITY BEAUTIFUL SCENERY THE MOUNT SEEN NEAR OLD HOUSES AND NEW ROADS ANALYSIS OF ARTISTIC QUALITIES IN AN OLD BUILDING Co- COTTE TRANSFORMED INTO A SADDLE-HORSE THE AUTHOR REACHES THE SUMMIT OF THE MOUNT AND ORDERS DINNER DESCRIPTION OF THE ANTIQUA- RY'S MOUNTAIN ESTABLISHMENT His SERVANT PAU- CHARD A FOUNTAIN AND A WINE CELLAR. \ 7[ 7"E stayed half an hour at St. Leger-sous- Beuvray, an old village in the midst of beautiful scenery. There are two old manor- houses in this village, with towers, and in the bottom of the valley lies a beautiful little lake sheltered by hills of some boldness and elevation, with a fine view of Mount Beuvray that reflects itself in the water just as moun- tains do in the true lake districts. Indeed, by the help of a little imagination it is not diffi- cult in this place to imagine oneself in some 26 TJie Mount. part of Southern Scotland or Wales. A ram- ble from this lake to the village of St. Leger, along a rough bridle path that passes through a farmyard, is one of the most picturesque little walks I remember anywhere. The build- ings seem to have been erected on purpose to be painted, and there are groves of gigantic chestnuts. Indeed, the neighborhood of the Beuvray and the rising grounds here are nothing but the advanced buttresses of the Mount is remarkable for the number and size of its ancient chestnuts, of all trees the most nobly pictorial ; but my companion the Antiquary, who has always something dis- agreeable to tell me about the tasteless de- structiveness of his contemporaries, says that within his own recollection great numbers of the finest old trees have disappeared, and he can point to many a situation now sadly de- nuded where formerly stood families of giant brethren, casting large breadths of shade. However, there is still many a corner about the Beuvray that neither the axe of the wood- man nor the hideous erection of the modern mason has ruined by destruction or addition, places where poet might ramble, or painter sketch, without shutting his eyes to anything. The Mount. 27 The village of St. Leger is remarkable for one of the most terrible incidents in the his- tory of animal life. Wolves, like dogs, are subject to hydrophobia, and on the i8th of June, 1718, at nightfall, the place was visited by a mad wolf from the top of the Beuvray that wounded and disfigured no less than sixteen people, of whom all but one died of hydropho- bia. The single exception was a woman who had only been scratched by the animal's claws. After this incident a confraternity of St. Hu- bert was established, in connection with the church and by the authority of the bishop, for the destruction of wild beasts. This is a curi- ous example of a hunt established by episco- pal authority, and in the closest connection with religion. Another mad wolf came down from the Beuvray on the eve of Pentecost, some time in the last century, and, having already bitten a shepherdess and several cows on the hill, attacked three men in a hamlet on the other side, grievously injuring one of them. This is a thing the wolf never does, when in his ordinary health and senses. Between the village of St. Leger and the Mount, the road passes through scenery of almost unimaginable richness. Beautiful 28 The Mount. slopes are wooded with noble trees, and there is an elegance in the lines of the hills in the highest degree delightful to the artistic sense. There is wood enough, and of the most majes- tic kind, but there is not too much wood; you see beautiful meadows with fine shadows lengthening down their slopes, and plenty of open spaces for the golden sunshine to dwell upon. This is one of those very rare local- ities where there is absolutely nothing to offend the most fastidious taste, scenery as rich as it can be in beautiful forms of earth and magnificent vegetation of ancient trees, without anything whatever to spoil it. Under the warm-toned afternoon sunshine it looked like some poet's dream of Arcady, the beauti- ful hills, one behind another, leading the eye on and on till it rested upon the dim blue land beyond the Loire. To the right of this rose the Mount, a great shapely mass, not a mountain with rocky sum- mits and ravines scooped out by the floods of innumerable years, but a beautifully formed hill clothed to the very top with forest ; at least so it appeared from the vale in which we were travelling, but happily there are still spaces clear of trees. I say " happily," because noth- The Mount. 29 ing so completely destroys all enjoyment of a hill or mountain as a dense wood all over it. There is another hill in this country, higher than the Beuvray, from which the views would be magnificent if any one might be permitted to behold them ; but the trees make this an impossibility, and you might as well bury yourself in some lowland plantation as climb that lofty height. The high-road goes over a sort of col, as a Swiss would call it, rising steadily till it comes to the pass and then descending on the other side for several miles. In this way, at least half the ascent is made before we know that we have begun it. Few of the excellent high-roads that were made all over France forty years ago have produced a more beneficial change than these good roads in the hilly district of the Morvan. Before they were executed, many parts of the district were only accessible on horseback or in the rude bullock-cart of the peasantry, and the consequence of such diffi- cult communication was brigandage. The neighborhood of the Beuvray was especially inaccessible, from the abrupt character of the minor hills which form its buttresses, and from the wild situations of the hamlets that are 30 The Mount. scattered round it. One has the impression, a quite involuntary impression, that a road has existed forever; it seems, like a river, to be one of the natural arteries of the world, and when we find buildings by the roadside, we con- clude at once that they were erected there for the convenience that the road afforded, when the truth very often is that the buildings are of much earlier date, and the road has come there since, greatly to their advantage, yet without intentional consideration of it. An excellent illustration of this is a cluster of most picturesque farm buildings where we stayed to leave the carriage just before reaching the col. They were probably four hundred years old, perhaps older, and for at least three centuries and a half out of that time they must have remained an isolated tenement on the slope of a wild Morvan hill, accessible only by some rocky or tortuous bridle-path. The nineteenth century brings a broad highway to the very door, and so the buildings immediately begin to look as if they had been erected for conven- ience of access to it, losing half their character inconsequence. How subtly dependent is the effect of everything upon its surroundings ! In a narrative of travel I think it is always The Mount. 31 worth while to set down, not only what hap- pens to you, but what you learn ; for surely the latter is the chief result, since it remains with you permanently afterwards. The Anti- quary and I had a conversation about archi- tecture and the work of modern architects, whilst the things were being transferred from the carriage to a rude cart that was to take them up the hill. Our talk was suggested by a range of buildings that seemed to me well worth drawing. Why was it worth drawing? How was it that rude unlettered peasants, centuries ago, could design an in- teresting building when the clever educated architects in modern towns only design things that make an artist shut his eyes, or look in another direction ? Well, to begin with, the old building was full of the most beautiful and delicate curvature. The sky line was in curves, the lines of the eaves were in curves, graceful as the hanging of a gar- land, and the curious felicity of these forms was unexpected, being suggested only by convenience wherever they occurred. There was a window high in the wall, so the eaves took a leap over it, graceful as the flight of a swallow when it passes over a hedge. One 32 The Mount. end of the building rested against the hill- side, so the eaves hung down from it like a chain, and there was just one piece of quite regular mathematical curvature as a climax, the arch of a doorway in good stone, with mouldings. Then there was plenty of light and shade, shadows cast from projecting roofs or nestling in cool recesses, lights catching brilliantly on pieces of woodwork or gray stone, and losing themselves along the rough surface of the walls. The color, too, was perfectly harmonious, all in beauti- ful grays, with dark purples and browns, nothing discordant or offensive anywhere. "Now suppose," said my friend the Anti- quary, "a misfortune which in these days is only too likely to happen. Suppose that the owner of this beautiful old building were to take it into his head that he would like a new one better, and so pull it all down and erect what he would consider a hand- some new building in its place. You would have a roof in glaring red tiles without one curve in it anywhere, a flat rectangular wall without a shadow, and every line either vertical or horizontal except the perspective of the tiles, which would be like a perspective diagram in a handbook of elementary science." The Mount. 33 I had taken the precaution to put a saddle in the carriage, so Cocotte was soon trans- formed into a saddle-horse, and in this guise began the last ascent. We were soon buried in the woods on a narrow road that climbed at first in zigzags and afterwards in a straighter line. The road was just broad enough for the wheels of the cart that carried our bag- gage; but the Antiquary took a much deeper interest in it than in the fine high-road that we had left, for this was a Gaulish road that had existed before the Roman invasion. There are several such roads on Mount Beu- vray, all of them leading to the summit. After a good deal of climbing we emerged from the wood and found ourselves upon an elevated shoulder of the hill, between a deep dell to the left and a great projecting spur of the mountain to the right with a rock pinnacle at the point of it, and now we had views over a great stretch of country. " That rock," said the Antiquary, " is the rock of the Wivre, at whose well you drank as we came along. I will tell you more about it afterwards." The narrow road plunged again into the wood, and soon became very steep indeed. 3 34 The Mount. I am a little in advance of the Antiquary and the cart, for he has requested me to ride forward and order dinner. Order dinner on the top of Mount Beu- vray ? Yes, very decidedly ; and I know perfectly well where to order it, for this is not the first time that I have climbed up into this elevated region. I keep on up the steep road till within a hundred yards of the summit, and then turn aside to the right, along another narrow way amongst the trees, and suddenly come upon the An- tiquary's own mountain establishment, the loftiest habitation in Burgundy. A few words of description are necessary in this place, for without them the reader would never guess what sort of a mansion was prepared for our reception. First, there is a large clear space enclosed by wooden railings and sheltered from the wind by the summit of the hill, which rises steeply to the east, for we are not quite on the top yet, though very near it. At one end of this cleared ground stand two wooden huts, and a stone cottage be- tween them with a thatched roof. At the other end there is a thatched shed with two The Mount. 35 divisions. This is my friend's encampment. The stone cottage is a recent development of luxury, built a year or two since, but I knew the encampment in its first begin- nings. It began with a single wooden hut, the smaller of the two that still exist. Next, a rude little wigwam was erected for a domes- tic, but the rain got into the wigwam, and it was thought inhuman to make him sleep there ; so a second hut was built, larger and more commodious. This accounts for the two huts, and the establishment was limited to them for some seasons, except when I added a tent of my own to it ; but there is a law which governs all permanent camps which the Antiquary could no more escape than anybody else. A camp is kept in the true camp condition only by being moved from place to place. Once fixed, it soon becomes a camp no longer. You begin, let us say, with a tent, a genuine tent, that can be struck or erected in a few minutes. If you are on the move, your tent will remain a tent, and its portable quality will be appreciated ; but if you fix your camp in one spot, you will soon have a wooden floor to your tent, next you will elevate it on wooden walls, and finally 36 The Mount. you will have a hut. There is a vast differ- ence in comfort between a tent and a hut, so that if you are fixed the hut becomes inevita- ble. For a year or two you will remain satis- fied with your wooden walls, but there are certain objections to the best of huts, espe- cially when they get rather old, and the next thing you dream of will be a stone cottage. The climax of your improvements will be a mansion, if you are rich enough to build one on the spot, and I have actually seen this done in the Highlands ; I have seen the rough cottage, where the sportsmen enjoyed themselves infinitely, replaced by a lordly shooting-lodge, where they enjoyed them- selves less because the good house brought with it all the exigencies of etiquette. The Antiquary has reached the cottage state now, but it is a genuine rough cottage, and not what is called a cottage at Scarborough or Brighton. I stop at the entrance to the rude enclosure and call out vigorously, " Pauchard." The door of the cottage opens, and Pauchard makes his appearance with an exclamation of delight, throwing up both hands into the air, and running towards me with many The Mount. 37 words of welcome. Pauchard is cook, house- keeper, butler, chambermaid, etc., to the An- tiquary when he lives on the Mount, and in all these functions eminent for a combi- nation of zeal, rapidity, and discretion beyond praise. He is a little man, a very little man, but built like a little Hercules, and as active as he is strong. A more cheerful, good- tempered, affectionate, and perfectly reliable servant was master never blessed with. Pauchard and I are great friends, but I know my place too well to imagine that his exclamation of delight was entirely for myself. One third of it was for me, two thirds for Cocotte. He likes me, he loves Cocotte, and she returns this affection with all the tender- ness the equine nature is capable of; certainly she prefers Pauchard to her master. Cocotte is soon at liberty to wander about the hill at her pleasure, we know that she will not wander far. Pauchard sets to work heartily with his pans in the kitchen ; the cart arrives with our luggage and the deal table, and we busy ourselves in getting things in order. The cottage is a substantial little building, entirely in granite, and containing a couple 38 The Moitnt. of rooms, one of them rather capacious, for the master, the other smaller, for Pauchard and his pans. The Antiquary, whose town mansion is finished with pretty inlaid parquets that nobody but a barbarian would walk upon in anything but dress boots, has judged, with perfect taste and good sense, that his moun- tain cell must be organized on quite different principles. There is no French polish here. The joists in the ceiling are all visible, and of oak simply planed, over them a boarding of oak also, just planed but no more. The granite walls are covered with one coating of rough mortar, but no finish of plaster. The chimney-piece consists of three huge blocks of stone, almost as rude as the con- structions at Stonehenge. The only luxury is a wooden floor, but we may walk upon it with nailed boots if we like. The tables are deal boards supported on trestles. Some shelves and two cupboards complete the fur- nishing. Stay I had forgot the chairs stools with hard wooden seats and no backs. The Antiquary sits on one of these, without desiring more luxurious rest ; but after a hard day's walking upon the Mount, I borrow a rush-bottomed chair of Pauchard, for he has The Mount. 39 two of them in his kitchen, and, like other rich men, can only use one of his luxuries at once. My first request is for a glass of water, such water as no Londoner or Parisian ever drinks. Close to the cottage there is a foun- tain, a pure perennial spring, filling a clean little reservoir of about a cubic yard, cut in the living rock, and arched over with antique masonry. The water is as clear as the air, and always cold, even in this hot weather. To my taste, the perfect purity and inexhaust- ible abundance of this and other fountains on the Beuvray are among its chief delights. There is no such water anywhere in the plains, and, do what you will by filtering and icing, you can never imitate the cold clear fountains that flow from that mother of all purity, the granite. The Antiquary, being a Burgundian, does not half appreciate his fountain as he ought. He talks of it, indeed, with the grace of Virgil and the enthusiasm of Theocritus, but the fountain from which he drinks is of another nature. There is a little cavern, well guarded by a strong door with great iron bars and locks, and in this cavern sleeps many a bottle 40 The Mount. of the choicest Burgundian vintages. I drink more water in a day than the Antiquary does in six months, but I do it in secret whenever possible, for when my host catches me in the act a grave reproof is sure to follow. He is quite seriously persuaded that water is most dangerous, and that the vine is the only spring from which man may drink in safety. The Mount. 41 CHAPTER III. A REASON FOR THE ANTIQUARY'S SOJOURNS ON THE MOUNT ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS THE MOUNT FORMERLY THE SITE OF A STRONG HlLL ClTY ANTIQUARIAN DIG- GINGS OUR MANNER OF LIVING ON THE MOUNT THE CHIMNEY INSCRIPTIONS TAPESTRY A SERE- NADE TO THE ANTIQUARY THE AUTHOR'S FIRST VISIT TO THE MOUNT. A ND now, whilst Pauchard is cooking our *"* dinner, let me take this opportunity of explaining why we are here at all, why the huts and the cottages are here. It is not simply for the pleasure of seeing an exten- sive prospect that the Antiquary climbs the Mount once a week throughout the summer, and every summer, year after year. The beautiful Mount is a delightful place to visit, but an occasional excursion would suffice to keep its beauties in the memory. Evidently there must be another reason for the Anti- quary's singular persistence. Yes, there is a reason. Far below the cottage, a great rampart encircles the hill 42 The Mount. like a belt; a rampart not merely traceable by the eye of a keen-sighted Antiquary, but in many parts as visible, and as large, as a modern railway embankment This rampart is about four miles in circuit, and the whole of the space within it was occupied, before the Roman invasion of Gaul, by a strong hill city. Now the work that my friend has been pursuing here for the last eight years is the investigation of this city by means of the pickaxe and the spade. He has a little body of laborers under him, who go on steadily from spring to autumn, and when he en- camped here at first it was for the conve- nience of superintending them and directing the work better than he could by occasional visits. The work has been very fruitful, and is pursued in the most systematic manner. At every new start a deep trench is dug from the rampart towards the centre of the city, and whenever the workmen come upon a building they go round it and isolate it com- pletely. More than two hundred buildings, for the most part Gaulish houses, have been discovered and cleared in this manner, and whilst the men were doing this they found a great quantity of portable objects, such as The Mount. 43 coins, pottery, jewelry, etc., which are now lodged in the Museum of St. Germain, for the most part, though a selection from them remains in the possession of my friend the Antiquary himself. It would be impossible to imagine a task more congenial, for a man of his special tastes and culture, than this great labor of exploring a buried city of the mysterious Gaulish time, and his perseverance has been fully rewarded. The diggings of each year, in consequence of an agreement with the owner of the property, have to be filled up with earth again in the autumn, so that the casual visitor, especially if he comes early in the summer, inevitably receives an impression that very little has been done. But he who has followed the work year by year, as I have, can well understand how attractive it must be to a thoroughly accomplished anti- quary, who pursues it with a clear knowledge of what the soil has yielded, and may be ex- pected still to yield. At first, when I heard, after a particularly successful season, that all the buildings were to be buried again after their temporary disinterment, it seemed to me a lamentable necessity; but the Antiquary soon convinced me that the interests of knowl- 44 The Mount. edge and those of the owner of the land were identical in this, for the reinterment of the buildings was the only sure guaranty of their preservation for a distant future. Even the effect of the weather upon the uncemented Gaulish walls for the Gauls only used clay for mortar would in a few years reduce their houses to mere indistinguishable heaps, whilst all the hewn stones of the later Roman dwellings would certainly be carried away by the peasants, if left exposed to their unhis- torical feelings of admiration. The life on the Mount has quite a peculiar charm for me, which I would convey to the reader if it were only possible. There is a constant interest in the excavations, for almost every hour brings something curious to light, and if we are absent for a day there is sure to be a small collection of curiosities awaiting our return in the evening. It is impossible to imagine a more agreeable host than my friend the Antiquary, and it would be difficult perhaps to find a guest more easily satisfied, as for luxuries, than I am ; indeed, to confess the truth, the very roughness and simplicity of our existence on the Mount are profoundly agreeable to my feelings, just as a rough towel The Mount. 45 is agreeable to my skin. The sort of refine- ment which is represented by carpets and French polish is in my opinion rather irritat- ing than agreeable, and if a certain yachtsman whose cabin is furnished in blue and white satin were to make me a present of his craft, no feelings of gratitude would be strong enough to make me endure such upholstery a day. On the Mount we have no such imped- iments to true comfort, and I am happy to say, too, that Pauchard is not one of those terrible French cooks who serve three times as many dishes as an Englishman requires. He gives us enough, but not too much, which is the perfect art of making dinner agreeable. The very things upon the table belong to the place, and are in keeping with the purpose of the Antiquary's sojourn here. The water jugs and wine bottles are set upon fragments of Gaulish pottery by way of table mats, and when we eat boiled eggs our egg cups are broken necks of amphorae. The chimney- piece is made of three stones taken from a Gaulish house, and the latest chisel-mark upon them is anterior to the time of Caesar. The side pieces are great slabs of granite, but the entablature is a thick piece of white stone 46 The Mount. with two sockets sunk in it at a little distance from the ends. It was the sacred white threshold stone of the Gaulish dwelling, and those two sockets were made to receive the upright posts of wood. Although we are in June, and a Burgundy June, my host has a great fire in the chimney every evening to remove any remains of winter damp that may linger about the room. Firewood is a luxury of which the supply is practically unlimited on the Beuvray, for we are surrounded by the dense forest, and whenever the weather is chilly, as it often is at that height in the even- ing, we make fires that would astonish a Pa- risian. When the strange rude chimney is filled with blazing logs, and lighted by their glare, it looks like a Druid temple illuminated by the flames of a sacrifice. The walls of the room, as I said, are covered with rough mortar, yet artists and scholars who have visited the place have amused their leisure in covering them with sketches and inscriptions. The master of the house has himself writ- ten above the chimney-piece, in large Greek letters, 'EIPH'NH, The Mount. 47 which is his way of saying " Pax vobiscum " to his guests; and truly here is peace, the peace of loving kindness and good will, the peace, too, of beautiful nature, far from the noise of cities. Another wall is entirely covered with mediaeval tapestry, a forest scene with quaintly costumed figures. This is the only luxury about the place, but it is not Philistine luxury, Philistinism would have begun by putting the tapestry on the floor, had it possessed such a thing. Those strange figures and that dark green foliage glimmer mysteriously in the glow of the firelight, and we feel that they are with us when scarcely looking at them directly. It suits the Antiquary's comprehensive interest in the past to have the middle ages represented here along with times of far higher antiquity. His too great indulgence has permitted a good deal of rough sketching on the other walls. For example, there is a big charcoal drawing, of which I am not the author, repre- senting my arrival here, "Once upon a midnight dreary," with two companions and my faithful Cocotte, who is turned into a sumpter horse for the occasion, and laden with all our baggage. 48 The Mount. The artist has rather abused his permission to blacken the wall with charcoal, but to relieve the general blackness he has taken the liberty, or rather license, of introducing a moon that was not visible at all when the inci- dent happened. This may, however, be per- mitted to him as a compensation for what lay entirely beyond his power, and was therefore of necessity omitted. The fact is, that as on that occasion we arrived very late, that is to say, at one o'clock in the morning, the Anti- quary was asleep in one of the wooden huts, and Pauchard was asleep in the other. I had foreseen this and planned nothing less than a serenade, which we practised diligently in the wood till we could sing it tolerably in tune. The serenade I chose for the occasion is an ex- ceedingly beautiful one : the music is perfect serenader's music, with the true poetical pas- sionate rising and falling of the voice, like the sighing of the wind, and to hear it well sung in the South of France, as I first heard it, with a guitar, carries you to Granada and the Alhambra at once and plunges you in a dream of passion, moonlight, and a balcony. It was certainly the first time in his life that the Anti- quary had been addressed as a charming girl of The Motint. 49 Granada. However, we managed to keep grave enough to sing our parts in tune, and sang with great strength in the fortissimos to awaken the sleeper, and equal softness in the pianissimos to soothe him again : " Charmante fille de Grenade, A mes accents reveille toi! N'entends-tu pas la se"re'nade? C'est moi, c'est moi, c'est moi! Oui ! c'est moi, ton amant fidele, Ton Lorenzo, qui chante ici, Mais tu parais, ma toute belle. Merci ! Merci ! Tra la la, tra la la la la la, tra la la la la, la la la, la la la" etc. The Antiquary first began to dream he was at the Opera, then gradually awoke in the darkness of his hut; but the music, still per- sisting, produced the strangest effect upon his mind. " Am I still dreaming?" he thought, "or can there be really music like this in the wild woods of the Beuvray ? " Then he opened the door of his hut and looked out upon us. Pauchard turned out, too, and pre- pared us a supper, after which we sat talking and smoking for an hour or two before going to bed, our good-natured host being perfectly delighted by his musical awakening. As for 50 The Moimt. Pauchard, he was most flattering in his eulo- gium of our music, and prepared our supper with the air of a man who was convinced that we had fully deserved it. It has happened to me more than once to drop in upon the Antiquary quite unexpect- edly in the late evening, when he was sitting alone, writing the record of his discoveries. I shall always pleasantly remember my first visit to the Mount, on foot, with a knapsack and staff, alone. It was late twilight when I got to the summit, and the difficulty was to find the Antiquary's hut, for his encamp- ment consisted of a single hut at that time, but by a strange mixture of reasoning and good luck I went straight to the nook where it lay hidden. Much of the happiness of the old camp in the Highlands came back to me that evening, and the solitary hut on the hill- top surrounded by vast forests, with loaded revolvers hanging on the walls, had a romantic interest that the cottage will never rival. Besides, 1 believed then in the solitude of the Beuvray, but have since discovered that there is no place in the neighborhood where you are less likely to enjoy a day of privacy. However, we have it to ourselves at night. The Mount. 51 CHAPTER IV. OUR CUSTOM OF TAKING A WALK AT MIDNIGHT THE PLATEAU OF THE BEUVRAY THE ANTIQUARY BUILDS AN ORATORY THE MAY FAIR ON THE BEUVRAY TOURNAMENTS HELD THERE TRADITIONS OF ROMAN WARFARE AMONGST THE PEASANTRY PHANTOM OF A WHITE HORSE THE PHANTOM HUNTER AND HOUNDS MONASTERY ON THE BEUVRAY OUR HAB- ITS ON THE MOUNT MONT BLANC SEEN AT SUN- RISE, 157 MILES OFF VIEWS FROM MOUNTAINS AT SUNRISE. T TOW firmly and insensibly particular cus- toms establish themselves in particular situations ! The Antiquary and I have a fixed habit of taking a walk on the summit of the Mount at midnight. We never made a rule of this consciously, but the habit has formed itself from circumstances. We sit talking after dinner till it is near midnight, and then the cottage has to be arranged as a bedroom for one of us ; so, whilst Pauchard is busy with this work, we leave the field clear for him, and go out. The cottage is within a hundred yards of the summit, and the night air that 52 The Mount. blows over it is cool and refreshing. Few places that I have ever visited are so impres- sive as the Mount at midnight. The ground on the top is nearly flat for the space of two or three acres, and the table-land is luckily almost clear of trees except a few glorious beeches that have crowned it for a thousand years. The sides slope down precipitously so that their thick woods do not impede the view, for the tops of the trees are below us. The vast prospect, extending when the air is clear from Mont Blanc to the Loire, is vague and misty under the moonlight, but we can make out some of the details nevertheless, as you can in a Turner landscape ; we can recognize the tower-capped height of Touleur, the castled crag of La Roche Millay, lofty themselves, yet a thousand feet below us, and we can at least determine the situation of many a hamlet and village that lie shrouded by the valley mist. Our geography is greatly aided by two small lakes, for water is always recognizable even in misty moonlight, and we can see these lakes quite plainly when all the earth seems scarcely more definite or substantial than an exhala- tion. One night it occurred to me that, from the situation of the moon, she would appear The Mount. 53 reflected in one of these lakes from a certain point upon the hill, so I took the Antiquary there, and we beheld for the first and only time one of the most singular effects imagi- nable. Absolutely nothing on the earth was visible except that distant lake. It was rippled by a light breeze, and the surface, catching the moon's reflection, appeared like a sheet of golden fire in an unfathomable abyss of space. On the little plateau of the Beuvray there is the site of an ancient temple, which I exam- ined in detail when it was laid bare in the course of the excavations, and within the foundations of this temple stood, in a later age, the walls of a little Christian church, with the round apse of the Romanesque architec- ture. Then the church disappeared, and a chapel or oratory was built at the east end of it, dedicated to Saint Martin. Afterwards the oratory also disappeared, and now the Antiquary is building a new one exactly within the apse of the Christian Church. He and his architect have spared no effort to make this little structure as permanent as human work can ever be. It is built entirely of large blocks of granite, and not only the 54 The Mount. walls, but also the roof and the floor, are of this enduring material. The architecture is very simple, Romanesque in principle but without any ornament whatever, and the whole structure consists of nothing but a small apse, a tiny space representing the choir before the apse, and an open porch as wide as the whole edifice, with an arch supported by simple square pillars. The altar is to be very simple also, a slab of massive stone, and the candle- sticks will be of substantial iron, fixed in their place in the stone. Over the altar there is to be a stone altar-piece representing a legend about Saint Martin, which the reader may never have heard. The legend says that Christ in Heaven appeared once with a poor tattered garment that covered half his person, when an Apostle asked the reason, and Christ answered, " Martin hath clothed me so," for Martin had given half his garment to one of Christ's poor on earth. There is already a substantial cross of granite not far from the new oratory, and on the pedestal of the cross is a small bas-relief representing the entry of Saint Martin into Amiens, where also he per- formed a famous act of charity. So far as anything can be accepted as historical in the The Mount. 55 life of so famous a saint, it does appear cer- tain that he preached in these parts and on this spot. For, solitary as may be the sum- mit of the Beuvray at midnight, and high as it is above the level of the surrounding coun- try, the place has been frequented by multi- tudes, on certain occasions, ever since the old Gaulish times, when a multitude lived there permanently. Every year, down to the present year, a fair has been held here on the first Wednesday in May from the Pagan days, when the mer- chants came to sacrifice to Maia, and to Mer- cury her son, so that the month was Maia's month, and the. day was Mercury's day. And if we could only witness those successive first Wednesdays in May as they have been kept on the summit of the Beuvray for the last two thousand years, we should witness the slow transitions of humanity from those ancient times to ours, we should watch the gradual change of costume and of usage, we should hear the change of speech. But if I might not witness the slow vicissitudes of two thou- sand Mays gone by, if I might choose one May only amongst them all, my choice would soon be fixed. I would have it in the middle ages 56 The Mount. at the time when they held a tournament here on the hilltop, and the great Baron of La Roche Millay rode up from his castle, clothed in complete steel, and met here many a proud count and baron, each with his train of vas- sals. Of all places in the world to choose for a tournament, the crest of a mountain is the most singular and the most romantic. It is like the meeting of ghostly warriors in the clouds, and it does not require any great stretch of imagination, when one is alone on this crest at midnight, under the dim light of a waning moon, to fancy the knights in armor careering over their old tournament ground once more, and then leaping over the pre- cipitous edge to vanish in misty air. The peasantry of the neighboring villages have preserved a memory of shadowy horsemen in their superstitions, and few are the peasants who would care or dare to accompany us in our midnight ramble over this haunted ground. But their traditions seem rather to point to the times of Roman warfare than of Gothic feast and tournament. They tell you of a white horse that gallops over the hill's crest at midnight, and of a loud voice commanding ghostly legions in Latin. Now when you The Mount. 57 reflect that these villagers have no historical literature whatever, nothing but oral traditions from one generation to another, does it not seem rather wonderful that they should have preserved this memory of the Roman invasion ? They have also kept a certain number of Latin words of command. I know that one of them, on meeting an animal in the night that fright- ened him, exclaimed, " Horror! Terror!" pure Latin as one could wish, and it appears that he regarded these words as a species of exorcism, yet they are not words of Catholic exorcism certainly, but an exclamation of fear and astonishment natural enough in a Roman. Strangely enough that superstition about the white horse of the Beuvray, which has made many a rustic quake with fear when belated upon the hill, has been confirmed of late, to the eye at least, if not to the critical intelli- gence. A white horse has often been seen both by Pauchard and the Antiquary, but, unfortunately for the effect of their testimony, I am bound to add that it was a living one. The phantom war-horse and loud-voiced Latin-speaking phantom commander are not, however, the only ghosts that haunt the Mount and the forest. In the middle ages there dwelt 58 The Mount. a certain seigneur in the castle whose ruins are still visible on the rocky peak of Touleur, and his custom was to hunt over the Beuvray with his dogs. He hunts there still, in the night-time, and still the peasants affirm that the cry of his dogs and the sound of his horn and voice may be heard above the noise of the winds. So seriously and earnestly do they believe this, that a gamekeeper at La Roche Millay, perfectly well known to the Antiquary, has gone night after night over the mountain in order to catch a glimpse of the phantom hunter and his hounds ; but he says, quite gravely, that although he has heard them many a time, and walked after them many a league, he has never yet been able to get a glimpse of them. Evidently this must be a version of the well known Northern supersti- tion of the Gabriel Ratchets, or Gabble Raches, but in this instance firmly localized by attach- ing it to the name of a definite baron hunting over a definite hunting-ground. The Gabriel Ratchets are phantoms that hunt in the air, and pass over your head in the late evening or night, when you hear, but never can see them ; and the origin of this superstition is supposed to be simply the flight of large mi- Mount. 59 gratory birds, wild swans, perhaps, or geese. The phantom hunter of Touleur is, however, believed to hunt on the ground, in the forest of the Beuvray, and it is believed, too, that any one who met him would see him and his hounds, as if they were in the flesh. The romance of this legend is in this instance greatly heightened by the romantic scenery where it is placed. The ruined castle of Tou- leur is perched upon the summit of a beauti- ful wooded hill with a rocky crest, between which and the Beuvray lies a valley of well watered pastures, and the side of the Beuvray which is opposite Touleur is hollowed into a deep gorge by which the ghostly hunter must ascend. There is a legend, too, that Saint Martin leaped over this wide and deep ravine of Malvaux on his donkey, and arrived on a hard rock which was indented by the donkey's hoofs when it descended. The peasants be- lieve this sincerely, and show the ass's hoof- mark on the rock. Of course there is a reason for this extraordinary feat. In the year 376, the saint came to the Beuvray to preach against the Pagan worship which was still cel- ebrated there, and overthrew the altars of the ancient gods ; but when the deed was accom- 60 The Mount. plished the incensed Pagans were still strong enough to put the saint to flight, and his ass took this miraculous leap to save him. The Christian traditions of the Beuvray do not end here, for in the fourteenth century a mon- astery was built on the opposite slope of the Mount, and fortified. The place, however, cannot have been sufficiently strong to resist a military force, and was probably only forti- fied against brigands, for it was sacked and burnt in 1570 by an army of Calvinists, in their passage from Autun to Moulins-Engil- bert, and so little remains of it at the present day that it would be difficult even to make out the plan of its foundations without ex- cavating. There is one acknowledged evil in our life upon the Mount, an evil which it would be easy to remedy, yet which circumstances appear to impose upon us, and that is insuf- ficiency of sleep. Although perfectly masters of our own time, the Antiquary and I, by an illogical combination of a bad habit with a good one, so manage matters that we do not get sleep enough for the wants of our bodily constitutions. It is generally half-past one in the morning when we return from our mid- The Mount. 61 night walk, which is the bad habit, and we get up early, which is the good habit, but the two go badly together and after a few days of it we begin to look dreamy in the daytime, and to have that strange feeling of unreality which insufficiency of sleep produces. I well remember, on one occasion, going to bed at three in the morning and getting up to wash in cold spring water and see the Mont Blanc at five. The cold water we are always sure of, but we are not always so sure of Mont Blanc ; sometimes, however, the range of his aiguilles is clearly visible at sunrise, and occasionally but more rarely at sunset, when it is going to rain. The distance is a hundred and fifty - seven miles as the crow flies. To realize the full marvel of this, let the reader transfer the same distance to the map of England. It is the distance from London to Scarborough. Imagine a mass of rock at Scarborough big enough to be visible from London, and you have an accurate measure of this marvellous extent of prospect. It is rather the fashion to laugh at views from mountains at sunrise, because tourists climb a hill occasionally, and find themselves surrounded by dense mists ; but the tradition 62 The Mount. that sunrise is worth seeing from a high moun- tain is perfectly well founded, for this is one of the grandest spectacles on the earth. We have quite a habit of watching it from the Beuvray, which accounts for our early rising. I think an informed mind realizes the full grandeur of the planetary motion better on these occasions than on any other, and to my feeling the knowledge of that sublime reality is incomparably more impressive than the most imaginative dreams of ancient faith or poetry. To believe that Apollo is driving the solar chariot westward in the heavens does not tax our powers so much as the far vaster con- ception that the whole of the human race is carried eastward to the sunshine by the regu- lar, unfailing motion of the globe that \ve inhabit. How small from the top of even a little mountain do men and their labors appear upon the earth, and how even a little lifting above their level enables us to think more easily of the globe as a huge material thing that exists independently of the prodi- gious masses of life which it sustains ! It is only in rare moments, but more frequently on mountain tops than elsewhere, that we think of the earth's mass in any conscious way what- The Mount. 63 ever; but on the Beuvray, with such a moun- tain as Mont Blanc clear with its serrated sharp edge against the eastern sky, and such a river as the Loire gleaming in the western plain through which it flows to the far Atlantic, it is inevitable that our ideas should become vaster if we would grasp the full significance of the scene. How grand is the silence of the mountains when the night shadow is still resting on the plain, and only the crests are caught by the first golden light of the morn- ing! Cool breezes blow through the foliage of the ancient beech trees, and there is a delightful freshness in this clear, high atmos- phere that we shall lose when the sun grows hot. 64 The Mount. CHAPTER V. OUR FIRST BREAKFAST PAUCHARD'S SOUP PEDES- TRIAN POWERS OF THE ANTIQUARY EXPLORATION OF THE MOUNT THE GAULISH RAMPARTS INTE- RIOR EARTHWORKS STRUCTURE OF A GAULISH WALL, AS DESCRIBED BY CESAR, CONFIRMED BY OUR OBSER- VATIONS GAULISH BLACKSMITH'S SHOP GAULISH ENAMELLER SURPRISING QUANTITY OF AMPHORAE ARRANGEMENT OF HOUSES LARGE MANSION NAME OF THE ANCIENT CITY MOST PROBABLY BIBRACTE REMARKABLE DEFICIENCY OF CESAR'S AS A MILITARY NARRATOR POVERTY OF DESCRIPTION IN HIS WRIT- INGS. T F we were inclined to go to sleep on our return to the cottage, there would be a difficulty due to the industrious alacrity of Pauchard. Beds have disappeared, windows and doors are open for ventilation, the board on trestles is re-established, and a hospitable board it is. Then come two great basins of capital soup, for Pauchard only makes one kind of soup, except on Fridays, and by long practice he makes that one kind inimitably well. Our days on the Beuvray are not spent in lolling on the grass by the cool fountains The Mount. 65 under the shady trees, so we need a good preparation for our toils, and we are both agreed that soup is practically the best because it conveys most nourishment into the system at least cost to the digestive powers. After the soup, which contains a substantial quantity of bread and vegetables, the Antiquary gives directions to his servant, and we sally forth for our morning walk. My friend is a terrible pedestrian, and it is necessary to be rather cautious in setting out with him. " Let us take a little turn," he says, and if you follow without settling on some fixed route he will lead you over the most fatiguing and imprac- ticable ground for a dozen miles without thinking about it, after which, if you venture on any inquiry or remonstrance, he will turn round with the most innocent, surprised look, and say, " Mais, vous rietes pas fatigue ?" If from pride or vanity you say you are not tired, he will go on quite indefinitely, but 4f you frankly confess that you have enough of it, then he will only lead you back by a worse and still more circuitous route than that you have already traversed, in order to show you the country, or some stone or mound which he considers interesting from the anti- 66 The Mount. quarian point of view. He is little and thin, and sixty years old, but one of the best pedes- trians I ever met with, especially on rough ground. I am put at a disadvantage with him in one respect : he can bear heat like an ostrich, and just when the sun flames in all his fury my friend feels lightest and most youthful, whereas my Northern temperament has an objection to being roasted. With a companion his walks are generally moderate, because the companion is a drag, but by him- self, in perfect liberty, without any restraint whatever, he goes wonderful distances. For example, I know that he set out one morning from his own house with the simple purpose of taking a little walk, and came back quietly to dinner. When asked where he had been, he mentioned half a dozen villages. " And did you never make use of any kind of convey- ance?" He answered simply that he had been on foot the whole time, and yet to visit the villages he mentioned implied a walk of forty miles. A thorough exploration of the Mount is a very hard day's work indeed, and visitors who come here to picnic learn very little about it. There are twenty miles of Gaulish roads in The Mount. 67 the woods, and a good many other miles of walking along ancient ramparts and from one interesting point to another. In moderate walks, still rather fatiguing from the steepness of the ground, it takes about a week to see everything that has either antiquarian or artis- tic interest. Nothing can be more agreeable than these rambles when too much is not crowded into each day, and the true charm of so charming a place is not to be realized at once, but grows upon the mind gradually by habit and acquaintance. To know the place properly, one ought to begin with a careful study of the ramparts, and this is not easy, for where most interesting and best preserved they are often buried in the dense forest. In their greatest size and perfection they re- minded me very much of a railway embank- ment on the side of a steep hill, being quite as large, with a road on the top, too hard for trees to take root in ; covered with short grass, in other parts of the circumference the ram- parts were of much less importance, but always quite distinctly traceable. Where best pre- served there are two roads, one on the top of the earthwork and the other running parallel to it at the base. Just on the crest of the 68 The Mount. Mount there is also an inner fortification on the west side, where the ground is not nearly so steep as on the eastern. These interior earthworks probably defended a citadel ; they are in good preservation, but do not, when ex- cavated, present any traces of the woodwork which was so important a part of the outer rampart, or true wall of the city. The struc- ture of this Gaulish wall is one of the most interesting things about the place, but to understand it thoroughly it is almost essential to have been present, as I was, when a por- tion of the wall itself was carefully dissected with pickaxe and spade. About four hundred yards of wall, including one of the entrances to the city, were studiously anatomized in this manner, and found to answer accurately to Caesar's description of Avaricum, in the Sev- enth Book De Bello Gallico. I will translate the passage here : " This is generally the form of all Gaulish walls. Straight beams all in one length are placed upon the ground at equal distances of two feet; these are placed inside the wall and covered with a good deal of earth. But these intervals which we have men- tioned are faced with large stones. These having been placed and fastened together, another course The Mount. 69 is superadded, the same interval being preserved, nor do the beams ever touch each other, but, being separated by equal spaces, each several range of beams is closely sustained with a course of stones between. The whole of the work is thus successively woven together, until the regular height of the ram- part is attained. On the one hand this sort of work has not a bad appearance with its variety of alter- nate beams and stones which keep their ranks with straight lines ; on the other hand it is most advan- tageous for the defence of cities, since the stone protects it from fire and the wood against the bat- tering-ram, the wood being fixed within the beams, generally forty feet long, and is not to be either penetrated or disjointed." These walls have been very fully described and illustrated in the Life of Caesar by Napo- leon III. Caesar's description is clear so far as its brevity permits, yet not quite perfectly clear. The long beams were parallel with the course of the wall and were inside it, then there were upright pieces and cross-pieces, which were fastened by large iron nails to the long beams. This presented a series of rude panels, which were backed in the interior with earth, but outwardly faced with substantial stone, so that the wooden framework remained visible, but the stone facing was flush with it, as a yo The Mount. builder would say. It follows, therefore, that in excavating this wall the Antiquary might expect to find traces of the woodwork that had formed part of it, and also the large iron nails that fastened the beams together. I happened to be present some years ago during this very interesting part of the excavations, and everything we found confirmed what was already known of this peculiar system of con- struction. We found stonework still existing to the height of a yard, and the empty places of the wooden uprights with carbonized wood always at the bottom of them, and these trous der poutres, as the Antiquary called them, were at such regular distances that he could easily, by measurement, predict where they would be found. The upright stanchions had been fixed in the hardened earth, but the matter was quite soft in the holes where they had been fixed, so that, by a simple process of removing stones and soil, the holes became visible at once in their regular order. The Antiquary expected to find the huge nails which had fastened the cross-pieces, and in that he was not disap- pointed, for the nails were still sticking up- right in their original position, though the wood had decayed around them. I have said The Mount. 71 that the part of the wall explored included one of the gates of the city. This was of peculiar interest, having been defended with especial care. The wall was turned inwards by two elbows, so that there was a narrow lobby or passage to be got through before the enemy could reach the interior. Considerable quantities of burnt wood were found near the gateway, which the Antiquary attributes to the burn- ing of wooden towers placed to defend the entrance. A ditch twelve yards wide by five deep was rich in such things as coins, brace- lets, ornaments in polished stone, broken hand-mills, and vases. Not very far from the entrance, and just by the roadside within the wall, the Antiquary was lucky enough to come upon a Gaulish blacksmith's shop, with abundant evidence of the sort of labor performed there, and not much farther he found a shop that had been occupied by a workman of a higher grade, an enameller, with many fragments of enamelled work that did credit to the skill of an ajje that o is too commonly believed to have been in a state of savagery. I remember the day when, to our great delight, we actually found part of 72 The Mount. the enameller's bellows, the tube of which had been made of enduring earthen-ware. Many of the Gaulish houses were in a remarkably good state of preservation, the walls being still high, and the floors so very hard that the workmen broke their pickaxes upon them. The system of construction with upright oak stanchions had been followed a good deal in the city as well as the rampart, and the hard floors often presented soft places at regular intervals that were the stanchion-holes with carbonized wood in them. The number of amphora found in these places was wonder- ful. I remember how a single laborer dis- covered thirty or forty of them in one spot, all lying close together. The houses were much more crowded than they are in a modern city, and if the reader thinks of them as clusters of cellars with thatched roofs, and entrance through the roofs by ladders, he will not be far wrong for a great many of them. There were some better dwellings, but chiefly of the Roman time. One very large mansion was discovered quite close to the Antiquary's own hut, and he little suspected when erecting that humble dwelling that he had chosen for the site of it the Belgravia of the ancient city. The Mount. 73 This mansion had many chambers and a large bathroom with a great bath in perfect condi- tion, built of fine stones as well dressed as they could be. A good sewer passed near to the house, not a mere drain, but a sewer big enough for a man to walk in, and there were some remnants of fluted columns. During all these diggings the usual quantity of small objects were found from week to week, and these in the course of the eight years that have already passed would have filled a little museum of themselves. Every ancient dwell- ing has been systematically measured, and drawn to scale on a plan of the whole city. Now the question is, What was the ancient name of this Gaulish city, and what was its place in history? Did Caesar ever visit it? A great controversy on this question has raged for many a year, and if I were to go into the details of this controversy I should easily fill a volume with the arguments on each side. It must be treated very summarily in this place. My friend the Antiquary firmly believes the city to be the ancient Bibracte, which gives intense offence to many inhabi- tants of Autun who consider that he is robbing their town of its claim to prehistoric antiquity, 74 The Mount. for Autun has hitherto very generally been assured to be the Bibracte of Caesar and Strabo. However, my friend is neither the first nor the only one to hold this opinion about Bibracte. There was a certain juris- consult of the sixteenth century named Guy Coquille, who wrote upon the customs of the Nivernais, and quite decidedly fixed Bibracte on the Beuvray. He settled the question in twenty lines. In the next century, the mat- ter was taken up by Adrien de Valois, a geographer who advocated the same opinion ; then came a writer called D'Anville in the seventeenth century, who began by agreeing with De Valois, but not having material enough for evidence, as no excavations were made at that time, fell back upon Autun as the most probable site of Bibracte ; and after him the question was held to be quite in favor of Autun, so that nobody argued any more upon the subject, which fell into "the deep slumber of decided opinion." This silence reigned until the year 1856, when my friend the Antiquary took it up again. His first view was simply the opinion generally received, and, like most other inhabitants of Autun, he knew nothing about the Beuvray; The Mount. 75 but being engaged at that time upon a work on the defensive system of the Romans, 1 he heard from the peasants that there were curi- ous ramparts upon the Beuvray, so he went and really looked at them. After the visit he returned home, convinced that he was in presence of a great archaeological problem, and proposed to the Societe Eduenne the idea of making an accurate map of these fortifi- cations, which was executed accordingly. I may just observe, by way of parenthesis, that the. Antiquary's powers of pedestrianism went for a good deal in his rediscovery of Bibracte ; for if he had been as idle as many of his countrymen are he would not have taken the trouble to go round the ramparts, a thing his critics never do for any consideration. When once this idea, " This must be Bi- bracte," had taken root in the Antiquary's mind, it naturally gathered to itself many facts and observations, as a theory always does, this being the advantage of holding a theory, espe- cially when the validity of it is generally denied. On re-reading Strabo the Antiquary found that he called Chalon a 770X19 and Bibracte a 1 Syst&me ddfensif des Remains dans le pays Eduen. 1856. 7 6 The Moinif. (j>povpiov, which sometimes especially means a hill fort, and always implies fortress more than 770X19 does. Caesar called Bibracte an " oppidum longe maximum aeque copiosissi- mum." The length of the ramparts answers to the first half of this description, and the productive wealth of the neighboring country to the second. With reference to Caesar's descriptive talent I here permit myself the liberty of a little outspoken criticism. He has been immensely praised, and over-praised, as a writer. It is possible that, considered simply as a narrator of military events, he may excel in clearness and simplicity, but he was a singularly poor literary artist. His mind appears to have been entirely filled up with figures (numbers of men and horses), dis- tances, and names> and he was so bad a trav- eller as to suppose that names were enough, forgetting that they have a meaning only just so far as the reader is already aware what is meant by them. For example, if in writing a book to be read in England and in America O I use the name " Paris " without explanation, it is well, because everybody knows what sort of a place Paris is, but if I use the name " Montmoret " I ought to explain clearly what The Mount. 77 sort of a place Montmoret is the first time I use the word after that the word may stand alone. Now, suppose that in this book, for instance, the word Montmoret were to occur several times without explanation, the reader would have a fair right to complain that the author did not understand his business. Well, this is just what may be said of Caesar, as to his writing not as to his generalship. He contented himself with a name, and yet with- out asking from any ancient writer such de- tailed description as is common in modern works, in which there is often too much of it; we certainly have a right to complain that when a single sentence would have contained all the information that posterity asks for, Caesar, who could so easily have given it, is silent. No two sites for a city can be more different than Autun and the crest of the Beuvray. Autun is on a rising ground be- tween a river and a range of hills, divided from the hills by a valley; the Beuvray is a great isolated mount at least twelve miles from the river. If the site of Bibracte was the site of Autun, Caesar might surely have mentioned the river; and if on the other hand Bibracte was on the Beuvray, he might have 78 The Mount. mentioned the hill. One can hardly imagine a modern traveller any Livingstone, Speke, or Palgrave describing the country in a manner so careless of the reader's legitimate curiosity. Caesar seems to have taken little interest in physical geography, and to have been entirely absorbed in his professional business as a soldier. Yet if we consider him simply as a military writer, we may reasonably complain of his laconism even in that limited capacity. Rivers and mountains are facts of military importance, besides being interesting to landscape painters. Imagine, for example, a modern military writer telling of the campaign in Abyssinia and forgetting to say that Magdala was on a hill, or of the campaign in the Ashantee country without mentioning its rivers ! Here we feel the utility of the modern war-correspondent, and we regret that the chronological difficulty should have made it impossible for Caesar to be accompanied by a clever professional writer for the Daily News. We should have known all about Bibracte then. As it is, we have little in Caesar to A except the distance of Bibracte from a battle-field ; but as he did not describe the battle-field either, the con- The Mount. 79 troversialists on opposite sides put it in different places, so as to be at the proper Distance from what they suppose to have > en Bibracte. If Caesar had been a good topographer, antiquaries would have lost many of the pleasures of debate, and my friend the Antiquary would probably have had nothing to discover. 8o The Mount. CHAPTER VI. ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTEREST OF A RAILWAY-CUTTING THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS NAPOLEON III. His SUBSIDY FOR THE EXCAVATIONS ON THE MOUNT LOCAL SPITE AND ANIMOSITY BAD FAITH AND INTENSE PREJUDICE THE GREAT WATER AR- GUMENT ABUNDANCE OF WATER ON THE BEUVRAY LETTERS AGAINST THE ANTIQUARY ADDRESSED TO GREAT PERSONAGES PRINCE BISMARCK THE INFLICTION OF TOURISTS ASTONISHING INDISCRETION OF FASH- IONABLE TOURISTS CONDUCT OF A PARTY OF NO- BILITY MISBEHAVIOR OF TWO TITLED LADIES THE COUNT OF PARIS. CURIOUSLY enough, whilst the Antiquary ^-^ was making his intentional excavations on the Beuvray, a railway company, without archaeological intentions, was doing work of much archaeological interest at Autun, and of a kind directly affecting this very question about the situation of Bibracte. A cutting for the line from Autun to Gantenay trav- ersed Autun in its whole breadth, and down to a depth of six feet below the most ancient vestiges of human habitation. No trace of man's labors was found below the streets laid out by Augustus, which are in straight lines, The Moiint. 81 as regular as a chess-board, forming exact squares of one hundred and seven metres on every side. This extreme regularity of the Roman town, like that of some new American city erected on vacant ground, is considered to be presumptive evidence that no Gaulish city existed on the spot when Augustus laid out his streets ; yet even if such a city had been demolished to make room for a new one, it is still presumable that some fragments of it would have remained below the surface, so that excavation would have revealed Gaul- ish work at Autun as it has done on the Beuvray ; yet nothing more ancient than Roman work has ever been found at Autun, beneath the Roman ways, and there has never been any material evidence that the Augustan city was erected on ground pre- viously occupied. The history of the present archaeological excavations on Mount Beuvray is briefly as follows. Before the year 1857 some work of this kind had been begun by M. Xavier-de- Garennes, who had written a book about the Mount. After him, the owner of the property Viscount d'Aboville, whose name may be familiar to the English reader as one of the 82 The Mount. most extreme Legitimists in the National Assembly began to excavate on the sum- mit. These excavations were under the direc- tion of M. Bulliot, who is identical with the Antiquary of these pages. Whilst he was busy directing M. d'Aboville's excavations the late Archbishop of Rheims, an old friend of his, came to see. The Archbishop was a man of more than commonly clear intelli- gence, and candid enough to acknowledge a mistake. He had translated the orations of the Athenian Eumenes, and in his notes to these had found occasion to mention the Beuvray, and to prove satisfactorily to him- self that the notion of putting Bibracte there was an insult to common sense ; but when he had seen the place and the small beginning of excavation which had been accomplished at that time, his opinion altered. The Arch- bishop dined with Napoleon III. at the camp of Chalons, and told him what he had seen, urgently recommending him to undertake diggings in order to settle the question for the Life of Caesar. Then my friend the Antiquary got a letter from the Emperor, inviting him to an audience, went to the Tuileries with a map of the Mount in his The Mount. 83 pocket, and explained to his Majesty all that was already known. Napoleon took a great interest in the subject, and immediately be- came a convert to the Antiquary's opinion, which he expressed as his own in the Life of Caesar; but a more important practical con- sequence of this interview was that the Em- peror undertook excavations at his private expense and confided the direction of them to the Antiquary. His subsidy was not very large, but it was continued year after year; and as every franc of it was used with judg- ment, the results were very considerable. It has since been continued by the Minister of Public Instruction. This assistance from the Government accounts for the transfer of all portable finds to the Museum of St. Germains. Eight long summers have now been spent in this work with the steadiness and regular- O ity of a lucrative business, and in the face of much local ridicule and animosity. The Antiquary has many qualities that I respect very heartily indeed, but I respect none of them more than his persistent moral courage. Every one who knows what the provincial spirit is, and how immediately it fastens its slander and spite upon any labors above the 84 The Mount. dead level of commonplace Philistine exist- ence, will be prepared to hear that a man who spent his summers in a hut on a hill-top to dig for Gaulish antiquities immediately be- came the object of Philistine ridicule in his own neighborhood. The most wonderful thing in this spirit is that it takes such strong possession of minds that never concerned themselves with the subjects under discussion. It is intelligible, though to be regretted, that one antiquary should speak bitterly of the labors of another; but is it not astonishing that people who never in their lives read a line of any ancient author should be bitterer still on subjects as much beyond their com- prehension as the differential calculus? Yet the tongues of the most ignorant women were excited to feverish activity against the Antiquary, and they affirmed that he knew nothing whatever of the subjects which had occupied his leisure for twenty years, and the whole of his time for ten. I have been perfectly amazed by the self-confidence with which they settled his rank among the savants. I remember one lady especially who affirmed that nothing whatever had been dis- covered upon the Beuvray except the remains The Mount. 85 of the old convent, which everybody knew about already. Other people admitted that the Antiquary had found antiquities there, but said that he had carried them up the hill and had them buried to be disinterred when- ever convenient in the presence of spectators - I only hope that this theory was not in- tended to include the ramparts and the Gaul- ish houses. I have already mentioned the condition on which these excavations have been carried on, the condition that they shall always be filled up again in the autumn. Hence when the Antiquary's enemies visit the hill, which they do sometimes for a picnic to see the view and have dejeuner on the top, they can easily convince the ladies of the party that nothing has been done. But by far the most remarkable proof of bad faith in some instances and intense prejudice in others is what may be called the Great Water Argu- ment. There is a strong and influential party in Autun and the surrounding country who base their convictions on the facts of nature. They have certainly never read Professor Huxley, but they profess adherence to the spirit of his great words in praise of natural knowledge when he said that men relied upon 86 The Mount. the truths of science because they knew that if they went to Nature, Nature would confirm them. So it is urged that the Beuvray can never have been inhabited by a numerous population, because there is no water there. This is one of the most perfect examples of the strength of prejudice that I ever met with. People of both sexes have said to me with an air of triumphant satisfaction, " You know there is one thing which proves conclusively that there never can have been a city upon the Beuvray, there is no water, and that settles the question." General Changarnier belongs to this party; he says there is no water on the Beuvray. Now the truth is that there are no less than twenty-two per- petual springs within the Gaulish ramparts, some of which are very abundant; that three rivulets flow down the sides of the hill ; that an antique well which I have seen was dis- covered on the very summit; and that the water in this well, in the utmost heat of a dry summer, was within eight feet of the surface of the ground. Not only is it untrue that the Mount is waterless like Etna, but the truth is exactly the reverse of this. Mount Beuvray is as remarkable for the inexhausti- The Mount. 87 ble abundance of its waters and for the height at which they spring as it is for their perfect purity. So far from being deterred from selecting this crest as the site of a great oppidum because the garrison might suffer from thirst, the Gauls would, on the contrary, be attracted by the abundance of pure waters that no enemy could divert from their city, since the springs themselves were within the circumference of its walls. Along the course of one of the three brooks five artificial basins were discovered during the excavations, with a concrete bottom ten inches thick, evidence enough that the inhabitants had paid atten- tion to their water supply. Is not this Great Water Argument a very pretty example of the strength of prejudice ? The controversy about Bibracte has, however, produced mental aberrations of a nature still more surprising. The leader of the Autun party got into the habit of writing bitter letters against the Antiquary and addressing them to great per- sonages, to the astonishment of the recipients ; and when I say great personages, I mean the very greatest personages. The late Emperor Napoleon often received these letters, but they did not in the least affect his -confidence in 88 The Mount. the Antiquary. Since the fall of the Empire letters from the same source have reached the Minister of Public Instruction for the time being, and also certain foreign personages, including no less a notability than Prince Bismarck. I happen to have read the letter which was addressed to Bismarck, and I hap- pen to know, on the best possible authority, that he read the letter and had a hearty laugh over it. The Chancellor must have met with many human curiosities, but it may well be doubted whether he ever met with such a specimen of the perfectly unscrupulous con- troversialist as the author of that extraordinary epistle. Another letter by the same writer formed the subject of conversation at an august dinner-table where a great personage appeared more puzzled by it than amused. Although there is still much local hostility against the Antiquary, his theory is now very generally accepted by the learned world out- side, and every year adds to the number of his supporters. The local hostility has dis- turbed him very little, and only served to attach him more firmly to the work so well begun. A more trying infliction is that of tourists who come for their amusement. I The Mount. 89 do not mean the learned tourist who can understand what he is told, but the ignorant fashionable tourist who wastes the Anti- quary's time, intrudes upon his privacy, and is incapacitated by his own levity for any understanding of the Antiquary's explora- tions. Unfortunately, the huts and cottage are situated close to one of the Gaulish roads by which these people most easily ascend, and about eleven in the morning, our time for dejeuner, a whole company of them falls upon us at once. Nothing can be more disagreeable than these invasions. Some previous experience in Great Britain had quite prepared me for what we had to ex- pect. If you happen to be living in a tent, or a hut, or a rude cottage, people who think themselves models of good manners will be- have towards you with the most consummate indiscretion. They will open a tent curtain and peep in at you possibly just when you are undressed, they will crowd round the windows of a hut, they will open the door of a cottage and penetrate, uninvited, into the interior. They appear entirely to forget that your tent, hut, or cottage is just as much your mansion for the time being as their own 90 The Mount. houses are theirs, and that an intrusion is just as unpardonable in the one case as it would be in the other. How the Antiquary endures it seems almost past comprehension. In his place I would have hedged round the camp like Robinson Crusoe's citadel and put man- traps and spring-guns, at any cost I would have had privacy chez mot. He had been obliged to consider convenience of access for himself, and therefore had to be near the road, and the water question (so important for camp or house) had fixed him near a foun- tain; but there were many other fountains to choose from, and it would have been easy to make a hundred yards of private road lead- ing to a hidden citadel. A hundred yards, in these cases, may make the difference be- tween snug retirement and uncomfortable publicity. I once encamped in Scotland within that distance of a public road, in- fested by tourists, and not one of them found me out, thanks to a little mound of earth and a few bushes. It was amusing to hear them pass without a suspicion that my camp was there, for they would not have passed so readily if they had known of it. One day the Antiquary and I, with a com- The Mount. 91 mon friend of ours, were all happily at de- jeuner in the cottage, when our happiness was suddenly clouded by one of those appari- tions that are much more inimical to peace than the white horse or the phantom hunts- man. Fifteen tourists came in a body. First they looked in at us through the window, and then they came inside and crowded the room where we were eating. There was some bacon hung up in a corner of the room with the punning inscription, " 1'Art pour tous," so one of the ladies inquired if we sold bacon. It was of course simply impossible for Pau- chard to continue the service of our table, and our repast was suspended for about half an hour. Our visitors were a distinguished party of nobility, but my impression is that when you go in a body to pay a visit to a gentleman in any house or cottage that it may please him to inhabit, you ought not to crowd into his dining-room and interrupt his meal so that his guests have to wait half an hour between two dishes. At last, however, they went out again and we resumed our forks ; but suddenly the Antiquary said to me, " I do hope you have locked your hut (he had surrendered one of the huts to me 92 The Motmt. for a study and bedroom), for if you have not, those people will be inside it, and I have a lot of most precious things on the shelf which they are likely enough to pilfer. You have no notion how fashionable tourists will steal when they have an opportunity." This re- minded me that the shelves of my hut were covered with a number of ancient ornaments and curious specimens of the greatest value as illustrations of the state of the arts in Gaul, so I sprang from my seat and said, " If any one is in the hut, he shall not be in it long ! " Well, when I got there I found a gentleman inside fingering the antiquities in question, and a lady looking at the con- tents of my portmanteau, which lay open on the bed. I turned both of them out sharply, fastened the shutter inside, and then locked the door in a sufficiently demonstra- tive manner to make myself clearly under- stood. I hesitated an instant whether I should not rather just turn the key on them, leave them locked up together inside, and set off to the woods for the rest of the day ; but consideration for the Antiquary's pre- cious bits of Gaulish and Roman jewelry, coins, etc., made me reflect that these people The Mount. 93 were better outside the hut than in. It would have deeply gratified and amused me, how- ever, to make prisoners of them, and I have ever since regretted that the precious anti- quities ensured them liberty. The lady in question was a fashionable titled lady. It seemed, no doubt, perfectly natural to her to go into my bedroom and amuse herself by examining its contents ; but suppose that I were to return the visit in the same man- ner ? She lives at a great chateau, and I ask what impression would be produced in the noble society there if I were to penetrate, without permission, into her bedroom and examine the contents of her drawers ? The answer is easy. I should most certainly be sent to prison. Then why does she consider herself authorized to do in my habitation what I might not do in hers? It is just possible that our plain, rough costume on the Mount, for we wear nothing but old gray clothes there, and our big boots do not get blackened and polished like the boots of dandies on the boulevard, with the rough walls of the cottage, its simple furniture and suspended flitch of bacon, may have inspired our visitors with the notion that we were not 94 The Moimt. persons worthy of much consideration ; but that is not a reason for invading our humble dwellings. It is strange, too, that the knowl- edge of good manners appears to be in in- verse ratio to the rank of the personage. I thought it difficult to go beyond the indis- cretion of the above-mentioned lady, but there came two others of more elevated rank one day who behaved still more inexcusably. Their servant was sent up with provisions for them, which he deposited at the cottage. The weather was bad outside, and they came to eat their luncheon in the Antiquary's sim- ple room. They behaved as if their bodies were two icebergs, chilling the atmosphere, and their souls two polar bears. A young gentleman present, a guest of the Antiquary, and himself a scion of the most ancient no- bility in France, was snubbed by them most outrageously because he very kindly took the trouble to be polite. One of the two ladies positively inquired " in what capacity (a quel titre) the young man offered them these at- tentions." To which the Antiquary, who is generally mildness itself, gave them an answer which prevented any further obser- vations of that nature. The scene was at The Moiint. 95 the same time very irritating and very amus- ing. It would have delighted Thackeray, and given him material for a chapter; it would have disgusted Dickens, and converted any- body but a satirist into a democrat on the spot. It is agreeable, however, to be able to add that the Antiquary has pleasanter visitors than these, even of high rank. The Count of Paris came one day, studied every- thing conscientiously, and talked like a gen- tleman and a man of sense who had seen the world. When great people have bad manners it is often due to simple ignorance of life. The late Emperor never found time to visit the Mount personally, though the place interested him greatly; but if he had come and taken his dejeuner on the deal board in the cottage, he would certainly have left nothing but agreeable recollections of his visit. With all his faults, he had delicacy and tact, and the manners of a gentleman with gentlemen. But then both the Count and the Emperor had seen different classes of society in other countries, and had not always lived in the narrow life of a French chateau, nor been absorbed in the contemplation of their own immaculate nobility. g6 The Mount. CHAPTER VII. THE ANTIQUARY'S HOSPITALITY PLEASANT SOCIETY ON THE MOUNT AN ESCAPED HOSTAGE SELF- DEVOTION OF TWO YOUNG PRIESTS DISCOVERY OF A GAULISH FIREPLACE WE LIGHT A FIRE THEKEON EVENTS THAT HAD PASSED BETWEEN TWO LIGHTINGS OF THE FIRE THE ANTIQUARY DELIVERS AN ELO- QUENT LECTURE AND SINGS OLD BALLADS THE AUTHOR TRANSLATES POETRY DELIGHTFUL EVEN- ING PAUCHARD'S BEAUTIFUL LEGEND OF THE NIGHT- INGALE " LA PIERRE DE LA WIVRE " ITS LEGEND. INDEPENDENTLY of the numbers of tourists who intrude uninvited on the Antiquary's privacy, his own hospitable dis- position often crowds the little mountain establishment with friends, especially young friends. The tone that prevails there at these times is perfectly charming. A frank and lively gayety, with imperturbable good humor, reigns like steady sunshine over all, and there is an active willingness on the part of everybody to make things agreeable to everybody else. I had often been in socie- ties where perfect dulness dwelt with perfect The Mount. 97 propriety, and sometimes in societies which were not dull, yet spoiled for thorough enjoy- ment by some defect of taste. I have rarely been with people who united so well good humor passing into extravagance, with an unfailing right sense of what is permissible and what is not. We were as merry for days together as if we had been as many prof- ligates and prodigals, yet nothing was ever said that a young maiden might not have listened to. The merriest person in the whole party was a young priest who a few weeks before had been one of the hostages condemned to death by the Commune. He was actually led forth to execution, and put in the same omnibus with the others who were to be shot that morning; but whilst they were in the street, the guard took pity on the youth of two pas- sengers, and told them to go out and go their way. The transition from those terrible scenes and that imminence of violent death, to our free and joyous life on the Mount, put this young gentleman into such a state of hap- piness that it became perfectly exuberant, and the mere sight of his handsome, laughing face was as good as a glass of champagne. " You 7 98 The Mount. must not imagine," the Antiquary said to me one day when this youth had been making us all laugh till our sides ached, " that he is in- capable of serious thought, on the contrary, he is devoted to his profession ; but he is young and healthy, and life is especially sweet to him now, for the Shadow of Death has been upon him." We had another young priest also in the party, graver, but very cheerful, and he and I took a liking for each other, and had many a long talk together in quiet saunterings under the ancient trees. Since then the first of these two young men has devoted himself, along with the companion who was saved at the same time, entirely to the service of the worst classes in great cities, and has chosen for the scene of his labors one of the most dis- agreeable industrial towns in France. They hope thus to do something towards the civili- zation of the Communards, and believe that their own lives, so wonderfully rescued from destruction, ought to be consecrated to the good of their persecutors. My other young friend of the Mount has taken vows of volun- tary poverty and obedience, and is now a teacher in a school, with arduous, monotonous labor from day to day, from year to year, and The Mount. 99 no pleasure, or liberty, or money. 1 Wide, in- deed, are the differences of opinion between these young men and me ; but when I see them thus, on the very threshold of manly life, deliberately dedicating their entire ener- gies to what they believe to be the best and highest work that they can find to do in God's service, I bow my head in unfeigned respect for a resolve so earnest and so pure. Just think of the almost incredible force of renun- ciation that is needed for it! the sacrifice of family life, the abandonment of liberty, and this without any compensating indulgence of dreamy indolence, but with work from the early morning, monotonous, and wearing, and wearisome, and no wages in fame or gold, but only the sense of an obscure utility, accepta- ble in heaven ! The Antiquary says that no human strength of heart would be equal to it, and he believes that a supernatural strength is given. But whether you think with the Antiquary that a Divine power is given spe- cially in each individual case, or with me that 1 This is to be taken in quite a literal sense. I mean that my friend may not accept or possess any particle of the circu- lating medium, not so much as a single coin of the lowest value. He gets bare food and clothing. ioo The Mount. such possibilities have been implanted in human nature at its origin, you are still in presence of a great sentiment carried out into strongly persistent practice, which is a specta- cle more sublime than any we witnessed from the Mount, whether it were the pinnacles of the far Alps in the morning, or the broad Loire flowing away into the crimson flames of the sunset. One day, when these and other young men were with us, the laborers made a great find, they found a semicircular Gaulish fireplace in quite perfect preservation, with remains of charcoal in it from the last fire that the Gaul had burned there two thousand years ago upon Bibracte. This interested us all very much, and I proposed that we should kindle a fire once more on that antique hearth. Our young friends were delighted with this propo- sition, and so was the Antiquary; and when the shades of evening fell, and the stars were out, that ancient hearth was warmed once more, and it is an actual fact that the charcoal which had remained there cold and black since the Gaul quitted it was lighted again from our own firewood. There was not one of us who did not deeply feel the awful vastness of the inter- The Mount. 101 val between the last time that wood flamed there and the present. The entire space of time occupied by the history of Christianity had passed in the tremendous interval be- tween the extinguishing and the rekindling of one of those bits of charcoal, the vast pageant of the Middle Ages with their count- less wars, the slow formation of the mighty modern empires, the discovery and repeopling of America from the arctic solitudes to Cape Horn, the long genealogy of all the most ancient existing families in the world, the rise, decline, and fall of the Papacy as a temporal power, the whole history of royalty in France down to what may very probably have been its final extinction at Sedan, the grandeur of Spain, the grandeur of Holland, yes, even the grandeur of the Caliphs, all had passed in that great gulf of time which the mind could not contemplate without giddiness. Of all these things we spoke, and I too, as an Englishman, had my special private thoughts about some- thing that had passed between these two lightings of a fire. When the Gaul lighted his fire there the sons of Britain were powerless against the strength of Rome ; but when we lighted our fire, Great Britain had become a IO2 The Mount. mother of nations and empress of subject races, with a territory vaster than the dreams of Caesar and a population more numerous than the multitudes of Alexander, whilst the strength of every man in England had been multiplied a hundred-fold by inventions never imagined by any ancient, not even by the fer- tile brain of Archimedes. There are times in life which we remember always, times which become a part of our con- scious experience, to which we afterwards refer as if they were dates of great events ; yet these times are often calm and uneventful. Our evening by that Gaulish fireplace was one of them. All who were present remember the whole of that long evening vividly. We were all in a condition of extreme sensitiveness to romantic and poetic emotion, due to the strangeness of the scene, to its perfect beauty, and the entire absence of every discordant element. We had all been strongly impressed with the mere lighting of the fire, and the warming of a hearth that had been cold since the birth of Christ ; nor was the visible scene around us of a character likely to destroy in us that sense of mystery and vastness which alone is capable of perceiving the abysses of The Mount. 103 time past. The sky was " softly dark and darkly pure" above us, the clear, dark sky of a summer twilight in Burgundy. On one hand were the old beechen groves, throwing their branches wide, on the other the sudden slope of the forest beneath us down into the deep valley ; and a vast prospect led the eye over minor hills and plains till it met the crimson mist of the western horizon. Then the stars became brighter and brighter, and the flame of our fire glowed more ruddily, and the Antiquary, inspired by the influences of the scene and the hour, talked to us of the past with the unconscious eloquence of a speaker who is absorbed in a great subject, and sure of the full sympathy of his audience. When he came to the Middle Ages, he sang to us old ballads and pointed out whatever they revealed of the life and habits of that time, making many a delicate observation, such as can only occur to the loving and ear- nest student. The Antiquary excelled him- self that night, and so communicated to all of us the power of his own enthusiasm that we were in such a state of imaginative exaltation as I never before witnessed in a circle of pri- vate friends ; and this condition of feeling was IO4 The Mount. the more remarkable for its contrast with our ordinary habits, which were those of light- hearted gayety and simple enjoyment of the days as they passed by. A singular proof that our imaginative powers must have been in extraordinary strength and excitement was what took place in the cottage on our return. The Antiquary had heard me speak of Ros- setti's poems, a copy of which I happened to have with me on the Mount, and he bested oo me to translate one of them on that occasion. Now in ordinary circumstances I could not ex- temporize a French translation of an English poem that would be worth hearing, but some- thing told me that night that a power of this kind was temporarily in my possession, so I opened the book and began. The effect, both on myself and everybody present, was most remarkable. I felt trans- ported into the highest realm of poetry, and became for that one hour a French poet endowed with Rossetti's genius, which passed through me as electricity passes through a conductor. In this way I translated if such spontaneous utterance is to be called transla- tion at all the Blessed Damozel, Sister Helen, and Stratton Water, and both I and every one The Mount. 105 present were in a state of intense emotion the whole time, indeed, as for the audience, I never saw an audience so moved by poetry in my life ; and the next day, when prosaic reason returned to us, we were all very much aston- ished at the enchanted evening we had passed together. When I look over these poems to- day they seem to me utterly untranslatable, and I cannot conceive through what medium of equivalents the power of them reached my hearers. 1 Yet it did reach them. There seems to be a necessity that every- thing should be poetical on the Mount. Even Pauchard, whose occupations of cook and housekeeper in one had certainly rather the merit of utility than the charms of romance, accounted for the song of the nightingale by one of the most exquisite popular legends that I ever met with. To enjoy it quite perfectly one ought to hear Pauchard tell the tale him- self, for nobody could tell it better, and he has 1 If the reader happens to know French well, and to pos- sess Rossetti's poems, let him try to read any one of the three above-mentioned aloud in French from the English text, and he will soon understand the difficulty of it. All poems are difficult to translate into another language, but in some instances, and this is one of them, the difficulty seems to amount to impossibility. io6 The Mount. the advantage of very nearly, yet not quite absolutely, believing it. When first he told it to the Antiquary, some years ago, it was in per- fect faith, but now he sees that the Antiquary only admires without believing, and a tinge of scepticism has, I fear, invaded Pauchard's intellect also. Pauchard is a man of little knowledge, but of delicate feeling, and when he tells this tale he gives it every help from well-chosen inflections of the voice, and you feel that although he has never consciously cultivated any art of poetry, the spirit of poetry is within him, poor, illiterate peasant as he is. But to appreciate this legend perfectly we ought to hear it on the Mount, under the old trees, on a summer's night when the night- ingales are answering each other in Malvaux. " Those little birds," says Pauchard, " have not always sung like that in the night-time. Long ago they sang in the day, but one of them had been singing so hard all day long whilst his mate was sitting on her eggs, that when even- ing came he was very weary, and went to roost on the vine, where he fell asleep directly. Now it was a warm night of May, and the tendrils of the vine were growing very fast, and they twined round the little thin legs of The Mount. 107 the nightingale whilst he slept. His comrades came to awake him, and said, 'La vigne pousse pousse vite, vite, vite, vite, vite /' but he was so tired that he could not be awakened. At last morning dawned and then the sleeper awoke, but only to find himself helplessly fet- tered by the tendrils of the vine which had grown so quickly that now they held him fast, and he could not get away with all the flutter- ing of his wings. Then his comrades saw him die, and they said to one another, ' We will sleep no more in the night so long as the vine is growing.' And ever since then they do nothing but sing all night to keep them- selves awake, and this is the burden of their song : ' La vigne pousse pousse vite, vite, vite, vite, vite, vite, vite / ' " 1 Now is not that a perfect little flower of the popular imagination ? I never met with any- thing more exquisite. It is full of the most tender feeling for nature, and the lightest, most graceful imagination. It might have been invented by some cultivated Oriental 1 When Pauchard told the little tale, he pronounced pousse Pousse pousse very slowly and seriously, as if gravely an- nouncing a fact that was full of peril, but when he came to vite, vile, vite, he pitched his voice much higher and gave it an energetic presto. io8 The Mount. poet, it might have been a fancy of Hafiz him- self, suggested to his delicate sympathy by the song of a nightingale in the warm Persian night, when the vines were growing fast. Yet it was not Hafiz who invented it, but some nameless peasant of the Morvan, in an obscure village, nobody knows how or when. Much has been already said concerning the things of interest on the Mount, yet one or two of them remain unnoticed. The old Gaulish roads are still so hard that trees can- not take root in them, but where not traversed by the oxen that come for wood these roads are covered with short grass like a lawn, and the trees on each side meet overhead, making long, very long, avenues of green shade where it is pleasant to walk in solitude. In the deep gorge of Malvaux (Mala Vallis) the Gauls made a cutting for their road through the solid rock where there is only just room for the brook that flows from the Beuvray. This is one of the most interesting traces of their labors about the Mount, and as fresh as if done yesterday, the tool marks still visible in the hard rock. They had also evidently fashioned a projecting pinnacle of porphyry on one of the great buttresses of the Mount, The Mount. 109 the stone that is called " La pierre de la Wivre," which is believed to have been a place of sacrifice, and there is a very curious and impressive legend about this stone. The peasants believe that the Wivern dwells near it in a hidden cavern guarding his treasure, but that once a year the cavern opens and the Wivern goes out, leaving the treasure unguarded. As to the time of year when this happens the narrators differ. Some say that it is at midnight on Christmas Eve, others fix it on Easter Day during high mass ; in either case it is during mass, as there is a midnight service at Christmas. The popular legend in its present form goes on to recount how a certain woman, accom- panied by her child, went to the stone of the Wivern instead of going to mass, intending to take his treasure. She found the cave open, entered and took as much gold as she could carry, and came out just in time to escape the Wivern on his return. On look- ing round for her child she could not find him anywhere. The cavern being now closed again, she knew not what to do, and went in despair to the priest, who told her to go to the place every day, and pour milk and honey no The Mount. on the stone till the expiration of the twelve months, and then when the day came for the opening of the cave, to take her treasure back to it undiminished and she should find her child. So she went day by day without fail, in heat and cold, in fine weather and foul, and poured milk and honey on the stone. At last the day came when the Wivern left the cave and the mother found her child inside, sitting quite unhurt, and in perfect health, with an apple before him on a stone table. So she restored the treasure gladly and took away her child. The Antiquary, of course, looks at these stories from his own point of view, and he argues about them in his own way. All the Catholic character of this legend is, he says, nothing but an aftergrowth. In his view the legend is one of some Gaulish sacrilege and reparatory oblation. Some offering of treas- ure must have been sacrilegiously removed, when the Gaulish priests required a daily oblation (perhaps of milk and honey) until its restitution. The story is still closely con- nected with a stone that was most probably sacred, and has been rudely shaped into its present form by primitive human labor. But The Mount. 1 1 1 the Antiquary confesses himself much embar- rassed with the apple, which, he thinks, must have some significance, if only it were dis- coverable. I may add that it is not very clearly decided whether the milk and honey fed the child himself, or the Wivern to prevent him from destroying the child. H2 The Mount. CHAPTER VIII OUR PEDESTRIANISM A HAMLET NEAR THE MOUNT AUTHOR TAKEN FOR A PRUSSIAN SPY ART GENER- ALLY SUPPOSED TO BE AN ABSURD BUSINESS BEAUTY OF THE OLD HAMLET LA ROCHE MILLAY THE CHATEAU AND GARDEN THERE A NIGHT ADVENTURE ANOTHER RETURN FROM THE MOUNT WANDER- INGS IN SEARCH OF AN OLD PAIR OF FIRE-DOGS THE CHATEAU DU JEU ITS GARDEN AND AVENUE CHATEAU OF A SMALL SQUIRE MANNER OF LIFE OF THE SMALL SQUIRES IN FORMER TIMES WE SUP AND SLEEP IN AN UNINHABITED HOUSE THE PIED-A-TERRE BENEFICIAL ACTIVITY WILD BOARS AND OTHER ANIMALS ON THE BEUVRAY. T HAVE said something already about the Antiquary's pedestrian powers, which have been wonderfully improved and cultivated by his summer residence on the Mount. The summit is so small that it is like a little island high in the air, and you cannot get out of the island without hard walking down hill, which of course involves a corresponding ascent, from one side or the other, on your return. Many Parisians who live at the tops of The Mount. 113 houses cultivate pedestrianism on staircases, and the Antiquary is similarly situated, with the difference that every excursion into the outer world involves for him a descent of seventeen hundred feet. Just at first it seemed rather hard to go through these daily exercises of pedestrianism in obedience to the Antiquary's various projects for the amuse- ment of his guests, but our limbs soon got into the habit of climbing, and then we began to see the matter from the Antiquary's point of view, or in other words to think nothing of the climb, but only of simple distance, as if the roads to Bibracte had all been perfectly level. I had a resource for all solitary excur- sions in my good beast Cocotte, who climbed like a mule, but without his obstinacy, so I often left the Antiquary with his diggers, and set forth with Cocotte and a complete sketch- ing apparatus to explore the country in any direction that I pleased. So many different old Gaulish roads lead to the summit, there are seven of them, that our position was very central with these radiating from us in every direction; indeed this is one of the peculiar charms and privileges of the Grand Hotel des Gaules, as we facetiously designate U4 The Mount. the Antiquary's elevated residence. There are two or three hamlets about the base of the Mount which have remained unaltered for the last three or four hundred years, and one of them, Montmoret, is quite astonishingly picturesque so picturesque that one can hardly believe it to be real. It has everything to help it in the surrounding hill scenery and the magnificent old chestnuts, and nothing whatever to spoil the artistic impression that it produces. There is one steep, tortuous street with the richest variety of rustic con- struction, enormous shadow-giving projec- tions of thatched roofs under which great teams of oxen may shelter themselves from the sun at noon, curious external staircases and galleries, picturesque wells, and all so perfectly harmonious in color, with rich, warm yellows and grays that glowed in the afternoon sunshine, and only wanted green to relieve them, which was given abundantly by the chestnuts and the vines. The Antiquary pointed out to me in one of these buildings exactly the Gaulish principle of construction in military walls of defence as we have seen it described by Caesar, the strong oak posts and beams with regular intervals of stone- The Motint. 115 work. I made some studies at Montmoret, returning to the summit of the Beuvray every evening in time for a late dinner; but the Antiquary had kindly accompanied me on the first of these occasions, thinking it pro- bable, although this was in 1874, that the peasants when they saw me at work would take me for a Prussian spy. Without the shelter of the Antiquary's well-known and much-respected name it would be difficult to work unmolested in these hamlets near the Mount, for although the peasantry are both good-natured and polite, they are placed in a difficult position when they see an artist at work from nature, and this leads them to wrong conclusions. The motives of an artist's labor are utterly inconceivable by them, and cannot be made intelligible to them, so they are compelled by the defective condition of their knowledge to infer that you are making a map, for this they partly understand. The next question is why you are making a map, and for whom. For the Prussians, most likely, and when they become persuaded of this, the position of a solitary artist is not quite safe or pleasant. It requires all the tact and address that one may be master of to ii6 The Mount. keep things tolerably smooth, and allay these suspicions enough to permit a quiet continu- ance of work. I had succeeded in doing this for some hours at Montmoret when I threw down a little tube that I had been using, on which was the following inscription : ROBERSON AND Go's MOISTWATER-COLOR CHINESE WHITE 99 LONG ACRE, LONDON. It instantly occurred to me that I had com- mitted a great imprudence, but it was too late to be remedied. A young peasant near me seized the tube, tried to read the inscription, perceived that it was in a foreign language, and then said to his comrades, " Ceci n'est point Fran9ais, c'est du Prussicn f " Every foreign lano-uasfe is " Prussian " for the French o o o peasantry. However, I answered with the greatest mildness of manner, " You are mis- taken, my friend, these colors are not Prus- sian, they are English ; we buy them of the English because the English make them bet- ter than anybody else ; the Prussians cannot make them nearly so well, and we should be The Mount. 1 1 7 silly, indeed, to get Prussian colors when they are not so good, although they are cheaper. These English colors are very dear." Then I let them look at all my colors, among which, by good luck, there was no Prussian blue, for the learned young man who could read would have recognized that word immediately. And the question of price interested them very much, as I find that the prices of things always do interest poor people, who spend nothing themselves except on the plainest food and clothing ; so Mr. Roberson's prices, which seemed enormous to my hearers, happily got their minds off that Prussian difficulty, and allowed me to blot on in comparative peace and quietness. But it is not quite safe even yet to sketch about a French hamlet, although you may pass for a Frenchman, as I always do, and know the patois. It is still almost essential to be accompanied, at least on your first visit, by some notable of the neighbor- hood. An artist is, however, in some degree protected against violent animosity by the ridicule which his occupation generally draws down upon him. After a good deal of experi- ence in different countries, I have been forced to the conclusion that art must be an absurd 1 1 8 The Mount. business, for everybody seems to regard it with ridicule mingled with pity. Every artist who works out of doors has anecdotes of his own in illustration of this. A peasant who had watched Daubigny at work, left him with the observation, " II n'y a pas de sot metier," the meaning of which is, " Although a trade may be foolish, and futile in itself, a man is not a fool for pursuing it if he earns bread thereby." Another spectator encouraged me with laugh- ing patronage, " Faites done ! faites done ! Vous ne faites de mal a. personne ! " which signified in explicit language, " Your occupa- tion is ridiculous, but pray go on with it, for it is perfectly harmless." Sometimes, how- ever, we are surprised by observations from superior though uncultivated minds. A man at Montmoret, with a gentle and intelligent face, said to the others, " This is a thing that we are unable to understand, because we know so little; but if we had been well educated, then we should have seen and understood a great deal more about this work than is pos- sible for us now." There was the precisely accurate truth about the matter, and we may be sure that a peasant who could say that was a. very superior man by nature, for the noble The Mount. 119 acknowledgment that we cannot judge unless we know, with the equally noble and rare ac- knowledgment that we do not know, are the two first conditions for a beginning of profita- ble culture. 1 On hearing this it occurred to me that it was foolish and wrong in me to be vexed with the ignorance of these poor people, instead .of making some effort to remove it, though such an effort might seem well-nigh hopeless ; however, I resolved to make the attempt, and deliver a lecture on the fine arts to an audience such as Mr. Slade certainly never contemplated when he established his useful professorships. I began by claiming, with some authority, to be heard, and told my audience that if they would only listen they should be made to understand something that they had never understood before. They lis- tened attentively enough, quite a little crowd i I once met with a market-gardener on a small scale who had never seen art work done, and I went with another artist to sketch in his garden, from which things of great interest were to be seen. I never was more astonished than by the amazing facility with which he entered into artistic ideas. He watched us at work, asked all sorts of intelligent questions, and after four such sittings had got more art knowledge out of us than most people who are educated contrive to gather in a lifetime. I2O The Mount. of them, so whilst sketching steadily all the time, I gave them a lecture on the difference between making a map and making a study, and when I had done, there were at least half a dozen of the most intelligent who had clearly understood me, and these six explained the matter over again very clearly to the duller ones. There is a vast difference in rapidity of apprehension between these peasants and the English agricultural laborer. The Mor- van peasant is almost inconceivably ignorant, but he is extremely quick and bright. Some of my hearers were facetious about the honor done to their little hamlet in being thus set down on paper. " This great capital city," said one of them, " has never been so honored since it was built." I asked how many inhab- itants there were. Nobody knew exactly, but one clever-looking young fellow said it was easy enough to count, and went through the place, house by house, from memory, naming every individual inhabitant, and adding them by families as he went along till he arrived finally at the total, which was one hundred and eighteen. In a hamlet like this every one knows everybody else, and there is a familiar fellowship which is charming, or would be so The Mount. 121 if they were not almost invariably accompanied by neighborly hatreds and jealousies. Life runs in this little quiet corner as it has done for a thousand years, but ten years hence modern- ism will have invaded it. I found one little building with staring, new red tiles, and that is the beginning of the end. La Roche Mil- lay, on the other side of the Mount, must have been well worth sketching in the Middle Ages, for a strong castle with many towers occupied the summit of a rock perfectly inaccessible on three sides. This castle was replaced under the Regency by a large mansion of that time, a very good specimen of the Renaissance chateau, with the great, bare, comfortless, lofty rooms that the experienced traveller in France always expects in edifices of that style and time. I have just said they were comfortless, but they have one comfort in the hot Bur- gundy summer, they are delightfully cool. The wife of the present owner never came near it, not even to visit the place en touriste ; however, she at last allowed herself to be per- suaded, and when once she had visited La Roche it became her favorite residence till her death, which occurred very shortly after- wards. It is a most romantic and peculiar 122 The Mount. place. The old castle was occupied by a tremendously powerful feudal seigneur, and it is quite the nest for a falcon of that breed, as he would easily impose tolls on passengers in the narrow glen. Just on the other side rose the Castle of Touleur, on a rocky height now densely wooded, and the Beuvray stands be- hind in considerable majesty the Beuvray on whose high and narrow table-land these mighty barons were wont to meet for their tournament of May. Only one tower remains of the old castle of La Roche, but as regret for its destruction was useless, I set myself to enjoy the quaint garden, which was beauti- fully kept, but unaltered from its first design, a formal design contemporary with the present mansion. Huge walls, covered with flowers, sustain the high terraces, and you have gar- den below garden, each in numberless parallel beds, with curved outlines answering in their general arrangement to the curve of the great walls. I confess to an old-fashioned liking for for- mality in gardens. I like a wilderness to be as wild as possible, and a garden to be as formal and regular as art can make it, with no possibility of slovenliness. This was the Mount. 123 mediaeval theory, and the Renaissance theory also, with other forms ; it has been reserved for recent experimentalists to aim at a natural variety and wildness, which can never be sat- isfactory to any one who has access to nature itself. At a place like La Roche Millay, where nature is grand and wild in rock and mountain, and stream and tree, it is as- tonishing how pleasantly the formal garden attracts us by its discipline and rule, by its beds in determined shapes, and its flowers in brilliant regiments, for in the heart of nature we like to be reminded of humanity and of orderly pleasure and state. We cannot always linger upon the Mount, so a day has to be fixed for our departure ; but when we have started on our way home, there is no telling when we shall get there, for the Antiquary and I are travellers of a most uncertain and unreliable description. Once a friend of ours asked us to go and see a very beautiful property of his and dine with him, after which he was to accompany us to Autun. We went, accordingly, to see the place and accept his hospitality, and left rather late for a drive of more than twenty miles home. Now it happened that the Antiquary was 124 The Mount. bringing away the piece of old tapestry from the Mount, so he lay down on this tapestry in the stern of my vehicle. I have already remarked that on the Mount we have bad habits in the way of sleep, that we go to bed very late and get up very early, so that there is a strong tendency to get compensation afterwards. This was now the Antiquary's position. Having slept insufficiently for many days he could not resist the attraction of the soft tapestry, but immediately lost in dreams all consciousness of his present situa- tion. I was coachman, of course, and our friend and host was to sit at my left hand and guide me. Now, the peculiarity of our posi- tion was this, the Antiquary knew the road, but was fast asleep ; our friend knew the road, but he had drunk just one bottle too much whilst exercising the duties of hospitality. I was sober and awake, but utterly ignorant of the road, and the night was so dark that we could see nothing beyond the limited range of the lanterns. My companion got into a most interesting conversation about artistic subjects, which he has studied and under- stands, so when we came to puzzling places where several roads met or forked off in dif- The Mount. 125 ferent directions, it plagued him to be inter- rupted, and he told me to go right or left very much by chance, whilst he described the prac- tice of a great artist whom he had known in other days. I felt that there was some uncer- tainty in his indications, but he was there to guide me, and the responsibility rested with him. After some hours of rather rapid trot- ting, finding that we approached no nearer to any place that was known to me, I resolved to pull up and consult the Antiquary, so I shook him out of his blissful dreams upon the tapestry, and said that, having no longer any confidence in our late host, I begged for bet- ter advice. The Antiquary got up and first examined the width of the road to see what class of road we were on, then he looked up at the stars, a few of which were visible, finally he ascertained that we were near a wood. But this was all he could make out, so in spite of two furious dogs he courageously went to a farm-house and awoke the people, who gave him information. It appeared that we had been driving in a great circle (which the nau- tical reader need not confound with the art of Great Circle sailing), and were now within three miles of the place from which we had 126 The Mount. set forth. The consequence of this was that we wandered the whole night and only got home about five o'clock in the morning, to incur the most satirical observations from our respective households. If the reader suspects that the Antiquary and I had obscured our brains with Burgundy he will do us a grievous injustice, but a legend to that effect got credit in those parts. On another of our returns from the Mount we were led into adventures of another kind. The Antiquary has always some curiosity in view, and this time it was a pair of fire-dogs which existed in a chateau somewhere between the setting sun and the rising moon, if we could only find it. Neither of us had ever been there, neither of us had anything but vague indications. We knew that the said chateau was in another department and in another province, but we hoped to come upon it ultimately, and so set forth on the quest. When the Antiquary is once in motion, with an old bit of brass or iron for the object of his travels, he will go on quite indefinitely ; so I knew there was little chance of our arrival at any comfortable lodging for that night, and regretted not to have a tent with me in the The Mount. 127 carriage, a precaution I sometimes take in uncertain travels in the Morvan. It rather amused me to surrender myself quite abso- lutely to the Antiquary's guidance, and see what would be the end of the adventure. The first thing he did was to request me to leave the good high-road under pretext of making a remarkably short cut which was to land us several miles nearer to our supposed destina- tion. I never like to hear of short cuts when I am driving, especially when the vehicle has four wheels and is inclined to be top-heavy. Short cuts are nice for pedestrians, and not disagreeable when you are on horseback, but it is pleasanter to drive on good macadam than over granite boulders and through ditches and marshy places. The Antiquary first made me go down into a hollow which was flooded with water, that made the road exactly like a pond, and when we got out of that a hillock rose before us covered with blocks of granite the size of an arm-chair with scarcely a perceptible passage. A mile farther a gigantic chestnut, which had been felled, blocked up the road entirely, so the Antiquary led Cocotte into a cornfield under pretext of turning the obstacle, but finally found himself 128 The Mount. unable either to advance or to recede, so we had to take the animal out of the carriage and back out of it, after which we went through another field. All along this road the scenery was quite delightful, there were remarkable num- bers of fine chestnuts, with rocks and hills and a lake. Farther on we came to a chateau near a clump of Alpine firs on rocky ground, and this house, whose name dates from the Romans {Chateau du Jeu, Jovis) has the most magnificent hedge I ever beheld. This hedge is all of hornbeam, about twenty feet high and perhaps a thousand yards long, in all, a great massive wall of verdure with arcades cut in it, and so regular a surface that it looks as if it had been built, and as if you could walk on its broad and level top. Here again my taste for formality in gardens was fully gratified. It seems to me that a wall of ver- dure like that, with its arcades and regularly dressed surface carries out the architecture of the mansion in a manner which wild nature never can do, and I greatly enjoyed and approved at the Chateau du Jeu this transition from the perfect wildness of the pine grove with its rocks, that looked exactly like an Alpine foreground, to the ordered symmetry The Mount. 129 of architecture in stone. Gardening of this kind is a true response to architecture, and exactly the intermediary that is needed be- tween the lordly mansion and the wilderness. I may just add that Turner thoroughly appre- ciated the peculiar artistic value of such arti- ficial gardening as this. See how absolutely artificial is the garden with the great jet-deau in the vignette before the Pleasures of Mem- ory! There is an arcade of hornbeam there too, but not so lofty nor so long as the real one that I have just described. Other considerations were suggested by this peculiarly beautiful place. It is approached by an avenue of chestnuts, perhaps a mile long, and very well grown, though not yet old enough for the trees to have attained their perfect majesty. Now this avenue both gained and lost much by a certain peculiarity. It was not straight, as French avenues usually are, but as serpentine as the winding of a river. Here again I decidedly prefer the more for- mal arrangement, the straight line, whilst fully admitting the charm of a slow and slight curve in an avenue after a straight line. There is an effect of this kind in the magnificent abbatial Church of Vezelay, where the ground plan of 9 130 The Mount. the stone avenue of columns is curved to one side with a result in perspective that the reader will immediately understand. Such a curve explains better than any other device the distance between the columns or the trees, and in a sylvan avenue it is delightful to see the increasing spaces in the curve which fol- low a regular order of increase, no two spaces equal, yet all subject to one law. On the other hand, when the curves are too frequent and too rapid you have no vista, which is a lamentable defect of the avenue at the beauti- ful Chateau du Jeu. On entering it I had no notion that it was important enough to be worth notice, but expected that it would come to an end after the first curve. Then came a number of other short curves, always with the same expectation, and it was only after much driving that I perceived how noble an avenue it was. Nor did the mansion gain anything in stateliness from this approach. It was like marching up to a fortress in the zigzags of trenches, without seeing anything till you come close under the walls. It was quite dark when we came at length to the mansion of the fire-dogs which were the object of the Antiquary's quest. It was The Mount. 131 guarded and inhabited by one lonely old woman, though there were men in the adjacent farm-buildings to prevent her from dying of fear, and this old woman was in bed on our untimely arrival ; but nothing can deter an Antiquary, so he cruelly awoke her by making a burglarious noise at the window and pro- nouncing the name of the absent Chatelaine with an air of irresistible authority. The poor old thing dressed in great haste, and admitted us into a lofty but narrow chamber with the mingled furniture of a kitchen, a sitting-room, and a bedroom, all of it old and quaint like the inhabitant. I began to wonder whether the scene before me was a real scene, or whether this were not some odd volume of a romance that I was reading. The Antiquary did all the business of the interview, so I was quite free to look on as a simple spectator, and this left me a prey to a very strong feeling of illusion. The whole adventure was 'perfectly in the spirit of Scott, and might have been transplanted just as it was into the Chronicles of the Canongate without any sense of the incongruous. Every visible thing except our- selves was at least a hundred years old, not a great age certainly in comparison with the 132 The Mount. Gaulish antiquities of the Mount, but enough to give a great air of quaintness to everyday household gear. The old woman led us into four very vast and lofty chambers, in one of which was the pair of fire-dogs that had brought us to the place. They were of brass, and represented the towers and curtain-walls of a fortress, with cannon all in position, the work being Louis Quinze, elaborate enough, but not particularly elegant. In countries where wood is burnt the fire-dogs are often very splendid and highly wrought with fanci- ful ornament and invention, but I have seen much better examples than these brazen towers with the little cannons firing away from the battlements like toy guns. When we came away, I looked at the house from the outside, and came to the conclusion that there was only just room in it for the great cham- bers that we had seen. The Antiquary con- firmed this opinion, and when I asked how the family in former times could manage with so few rooms, he told me that in the class of small squires life in a country house was arranged down to the end of the last century very much as it is still in the houses of the peasantry. There were four large beds in each room, one The Mount. 133 in each corner, forming with its four posts and its curtains a sort of independent tent, whilst the space in the middle of the room was left vacant for daily habitation. Guests of both sexes occupied beds in the master's own chamber. This led us into a conversation about the changes of manners and customs within the last seventy or eighty years, and we agreed that although modern dwellings were apparently less spacious, they were infi- nitely more convenient and much better ad- apted to the requirements of civilized existence than the chateaux of the old French squires. They had no idea of the comfort of indepen- dence in a room, and with their system of living privacy was utterly unattainable and unknown, as it is still in the houses of the peasantry. They had not separate bedrooms, a dressing-room was undreamt of, and the idea that it was desirable to get into one room without passing through another does not seem to have presented itself to their imagina- tion. How ladies and gentlemen ever man- aged to get a thorough washing where there was no such thing as privacy, seems inexpli- cable. The Antiquary's explanation is that they omitted the ceremony altogether, which 134 The Mount. appears to be the plain and simple truth. Surely the great practical purpose of a house is to give facilities for civilized human life, for cleanliness, for decency, for study, and not one of these is attainable without privacy. Every good modern house has these, and therefore in practical service to civilization it is superior to such minor chateaux as the one we visited that night. But where were we to sleep? The Anti- quary had a private theory of his own on this subject, and I submitted to him as com- mander of the expedition. We drove many miles in the dark, along roads entirely un- known to me, and stopped at last before a house near the road-side, when the Antiquary lifted his voice. A man looked out of the upper window with a candle, and shortly re- appeared on our own level. A whiter man I never remember to have seen. His cotton night-cap was white, his hair was white, his beard was white, his shirt, trowsers, stockings, were white, and so was the candle in his hand. Everything about him was white except his slippers, which were of a pale yellow. He looked very nice and clean, and was most hospitable, pressing us earnestly to stay all The Mount. 135 night in his house and offering us a supper. The Antiquary declined with the greatest firmness, and then the white man handed him a key, and said, " Well, you 'd much better have stayed here ; however, I wish you a good- night." On we went for another mile, and then by the Antiquary's orders I turned up a narrow lane, happily not long, and we arrived in a great straggling farm-yard with a quaint pigeon-cote tower and a rough-looking sort of mansion on one side, with two very ugly and awkward staircases all covered with grass and tall weeds. The house looked as if it had never been opened for a hundred years, and there was not the slightest sign of human habitation. First the Antiquary put Cocotte into one corner of a big stable, and then he led me up one of the stone staircases, and opened an old oak door studded with big-headed iron nails. We entered a big desolate room with beds in alcoves, and appearances as if the last inhab- itants had quitted it in some precipitation. After this room was a suite of three others, and in the last of these was another bed and a very large couch or settee covered with faded tapestry of the time of Louis XIII. 136 The Mount. Not a living soul was visible about the place. When we came to the last chamber the Anti- quary said, " This will be your room," and left me there with a candle. Soon afterwards he reappeared with a strong, gaunt woman from the next farm, and she very soon lighted two great fires. There was a strange, musty smell in the rooms, as if no window had been opened for a century; so we opened every window, heaped logs on the blazing fires, and changed the air as thoroughly as we could. The woman spread a clean table-cloth on the table in my room, put clean sheets on the beds, and the Antiquary soon produced all necessary table utensils and two bottles of excellent wine. Supper was served at mid- night, and we had eaten nothing whatever since breakfast on the Mount, having been travelling the whole time ; so we did justice to the simple repast before us, though with re- gret, perhaps, for the culinary abilities of Pau- chard, whom we had left in his lofty dwelling. The explanation of this mysterious unin- habited house in which the Antiquary con- ducted himself so independently was simply that it belonged to him, with a particularly beautiful little estate of five hundred acres, The Mount. 137 and that he kept a little furniture in these rooms and a few bottles of wine for chance occasions like the present. A Frenchman likes what he calls a pied-a-terre, that is to say, two or three rooms of his own where he can establish himself in a temporary home, and be independent of everybody; nor does he con- sider it essential to his happiness that the rooms should be luxurious, or that servants should be kept in them during his absence. A town pied-a-terre is usually a single floor in a large house that is divided into flats and guarded by a porter; a country pied-a-terre is usually a small house close to farm buildings and guarded by the farmer. People who live in towns have a country pied-a-terre, and country folks have one in the town. The Antiquary's principal residence is in the town, but he has three country residences, where he can be as comfortable as he cares to be for weeks at a time, and even receive guests hos- pitably. The glorious Mount is one of them, this farm is another, and the third is in the vine lands on a vineyard estate of his. As each of these is within a day's drive of the town house, the Antiquary can easily visit them whenever he likes. The system is not 138 The Mount. exceedingly expensive, and a man always feels infinitely more at home in rooms of his own than he possibly can do at an inn. The feel- ing of being chez soi has a great charm. It is this which constitutes the delight of yachts and tents, to have variety of surroundings and still be under your own roof, even when that roof is only of wood or canvas. There is sometimes a good deal of friction in these arrangements, unless they are superintended by some one who has had experience in the organization of independent ways of living, and who can both look to details and set things right with his own hands. Now I venture to affirm that the Antiquary and I are both of us more than commonly compe- tent in the art of making a rough temporary residence habitable, for we have both had a good deal of practice, without which people always bungle sadly in these matters, and we have also a natural liking for the sort of activity which they call for. The reader who has never found himself compelled to make arrangements for his own comfort will scarcely conceive what a beneficial influence such labors have both on mind and body. They entirely relieve the mind from intellect- The Mount. 139 ual strain and from the habit of reflection which pursues the student like his own shadow, whilst they give it solidity and ballast by compelling its strict attention to material necessities and things. " If I could but work with my hands," said an accomplished scholar, " it would be such a blessing to me ! " Now what he instinctively felt to be desirable, the Antiquary and I value from happy experience. We find that the activities of a rougher and more self-dependent life are good for us after the ease of home. We find that any fatigues and privations we have to incur are just suf- ficient to keep us in good humor by the effort of the mind to react against them. The Antiquary is certain that the preserva- tion of his health and strength has been in a great measure due to his work on the Mount, which has supplied the great desideratum for beneficial exercise, a purpose outside of itself. If I have a criticism to make upon his pres- ent arrangements, it is that they are becom- ing rather too convenient and too comfortable, and that his little mountain establishment displays each year some improvement which removes it faster from the character of a camp ; but I trust it is safe from the invasion 140 The Mount. of easy-chairs and carpets, whilst French polish will be long unknown there, and unless by chance some specimen of it be discover- able upon a gun-stock or a pistol-case. The tapestry on the walls is perhaps an allowable piece of luxury, for it has a certain wild grandeur in harmony with the sylvan sur- roundings of the place. The subject being a forest scene, with quaint mediaeval figures, it is possible to imagine that this forest of patient needlework may have represented some sweet glade of the Mount itself, when knight and baron chased over it with hawk and hound. Even in our own time there is many a lair of wolf and wild boar within a league of the Antiquary's huts. Sometimes there is a great hunt, and on the last of these occasions more than twenty wild boars were killed. There are deer too, and foxes, for many wild animals breed within or without the ancient walls of Bibracte, no longer fearing the throng of armies or the noise of battle after twenty centuries of silence. A U T U N. AUTUN. I. INTRODUCTION. TF the reader will take a map of France, he ^ will see that the Saone and the Rhone make a line in the east side of the country which goes almost due south to Marseilles, whilst the Loire, on the contrary, begins by flowing from south to north, and then shows a strong westward tendency, sometimes go- ing westward suddenly, and then resuming its northern direction, but at last making a magnificent curve in the region about Orleans, and after this curve going very decidedly to the Atlantic. The southern- flowing rivers, Saone and Rhone, which form a single watercourse, and the young northern- flowing Loire, are for a time very near neigh- bors, the distance from one to the other, as a bird flies, being less than thirty miles in the department of the Loire. After that the 144 Autun. distance widens as you travel northwards, but still the two watercourses keep neighborly ; and they both run across the department of Saone et Loire, in which the Loire flows about seventy miles and the Saone eighty. The country that lies between these rivers is interesting in many ways. It includes the whole department of the Rhone, part of the department of the Loire, and three-quarters of Saone et Loire, a region in which the scen- ery is varied, and the marks of human history sufficiently numerous to answer a traveller's expectations. The physical geography has very decided features. There are the two great rivers, important even at that distance from the sea, and hills which are almost mountains, rising to about 3,300 feet above the sea-level, and about 2,800 feet above the water of the Rhone. The forms of these hills are sometimes fine, sometimes monoto- nous, but they always have the advantage of giving good distances, especially in that state of the atmosphere, very common in France, when there is a certain amount of mist in the air, hardly perceptible in itself, yet just sufficient to give a sense of wide space and remoteness. Autun. 145 A pedestrian travelling over the highest land in this region, and keeping between the two rivers, and as nearly as possible at an equal distance from both of them, would ultimately reach a lofty table-land which ends very abruptly to the north, not exactly in precipices, but in very steep slopes densely wooded. Just before the table-land comes to this sudden termination, it bears upon its ample surface a magnificent park, rich in fine old timber, with lakes surrounded by what seems a natural forest, and an old chateau, not a castle, but a spacious old man sion enclosing three sides of a quadrangle, and containing a great number of rooms hung with old tapestry, a decoration more abun- dant in this chateau of Montjeu than in any other house of equal size that I ever visited. The house is at the head of a deep ravine, crossed by a wall of great height and strength, and above the wall the ravine is filled up so as to present broad flat areas of garden ground, laid out in the old French style, from which there is a view over a vast expanse of hilly country, the view being enclosed by masses of trees on each side of it, as a theat- rical scene is by its coulisses. But this is not 146 A lit tin. the view in which we are likely to be chiefly interested. Suppose that our pedestrian leaves the chateau behind him, and crosses the park to the northern gate (which is more than two miles from the house), he still finds himself, so long as he is in the park, on ground which is either perfectly level or very gently undulated. When, however, he issues from the park by the north gate, he has be- fore him a very different scene. The land suddenly falls in a slope so steep that the road down it is a zigzag like those in the Alps ; and far below, as you look over the tops of the trees, you see a hill rising with a city upon it, and beyond the city a plain bounded by distant hills and watered by a gleaming river that washes the lowest portion of the walls. It is the city of Augustus, Augustodunum, now abbreviated to Autun. Like its name, the city itself has been reduced into a much smaller compass ; but as the name still re- tains etymological vestiges of its origin, so the place itself bears traces of the Roman times. There is, however, this difference be- tween the name and the place, that whereas Autun. 147 the name is only shortened and does not contain a single letter that was not in the Roman name, the place is not only brought within a small area, but altered in its nature by the successive ages which have passed over it. The Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and modern times have all devastated what went before, as a schoolboy sponges his slate, except that the schoolboy sometimes sponges his slate entirely, whereas it does fortunately so happen that successive ages rarely sponge out the work of their predecessors in a quite perfect and absolute manner. As seen from the height of Montjeu, Autun, like many cathedral towns, appears so dominated by its cathedral that it is diffi- cult to imagine how it must have looked in the Roman times when no such edifice ex- isted. It seldom happens that a church is so happily placed as that of Autun, nearly on the exact summit of the hill on which the city is built, and finishing it with a noble ornament. Spires are not always the most successful of architectural constructions ; and there are many situations in which a massive tower, square up to its sky-line, has a bet- ter expression of dignity and strength, and 148 Autun. holds its own better, at least it seems so to me. But the spire of Autun, besides feeing extremely elegant in itself, is precisely the architectural feature that was most required in that situation, and is a conspicuous in- stance of the positive improvement of natural scenery by human toil and taste. I shall have more to say of it, and of the cathedral generally, before I have done with Autun ; but it was necessary to mention it in this place, as the object which first strikes the eye of a stranger from whatever quarter he first catches sight of the city. Next to the cathe- dral, the most striking object is the lofty octagonal tower of the Ursuline convent, which was erected on a Roman tower, the Roman work still being perfectly visible up to the first string-course. This tower has in recent times been rather increased in ap- parent height, by the construction of a small dome upon its summit, which serves as a pedestal for a statue of the Virgin. A city at a distance shows itself principally as a collection of towers with a confused med- ley of roofs and chimneys between them ; and it is probable that the Gothic cities of mediae- val France were more effective at a distance Autun. 149 than any towns of Roman or Greek antiquity, simply because towers of various kinds were of such great importance in Gothic architec- ture and generally so well designed. In the Middle Ages Autun had many of them ; and a few remain to the present day, in spite of the excessively destructive tendency of modern French municipalities, bodies which really seem to find a keen satisfaction in clearing away the vestiges of past ages. A few towers still remain in the southern mediaeval wall of Autun ; and the massive square one which bears the name of St. Leger forms part of the Bishop's palace, where it is probably safe for some time to come. The towers visible from a distance are all mediaeval ; the Roman ones are still numerous, but hidden by the trees of a long avenue, which have prospered so as to completely overshadow the Roman fortifica- tions on the west side of the city. The Roman towers are now mere semicircular projections from the wall, and I do not know to what height they may have risen above the walls when both were originally con- structed. The Roman city was of far greater extent than the mediaeval one afterwards built within the limits of it, like a garden made in 150 Autun. one corner of a field ; but although Augusto- dunum was of importance as to size, and although it included public buildings of con- siderable splendor and extent, it is probable that it never presented so picturesque an appearance as the Autun of the Middle Ages. In the first place, it is now positively ascer- tained (as the result of notes taken during many years by observant antiquaries when- ever the soil has been disturbed for building purposes) that the Roman city was built on the modern American plan of straight streets intersecting each other at right angles, the only difference being that in America the houses are probably higher and the streets wider. A map of Roman Autun looks some- thing like a chess-board with irregular sides. In the mediaeval city, on the contrary, the streets went in every direction ; and the few old pieces of them that remain give some faint idea of the incessant variety which must have greeted at every turn the contemporaries of the Crusaders. Augustodunum had its gates, temples, and places of public amusement, of which not much remains to the present day. There are two gates ; one near the river, now called Autun. 151 the Porte d'Arroux, the other, on the north- east side of the city, called the Porte St. Andre, because one of the towers which flanked it, after being used as a temple by the Romans, was turned into a Christian chapel and dedicated to St. Andrew. How many other gates there may have been in the Roman times we do not exactly know. There were perhaps eight, possibly five or six ; but this is a question simply of anti- quarian interest at the present day, as all trace of the others has disappeared. The greatest loss is probably the Porte des Mar- 6res, which appears to have been an archi- tectural work of importance adorned with sculpture in marble. Much carved work has been found where this gate existed, and used as ordinary building material. The Porte des Marbres looked to the east, and is believed to have been the principal entrance to the city. There was a great amphitheatre, of which only the site is visible at the present day. In the early part of the seventeenth century the ruins were still imposing, and sufficient to suggest an easy imaginative reconstruction of the whole. A century later there were still ranges of stone seats and arcades, though 152 Autun. in fragments ; and now, in our own century, there is literally not one stone left upon another. It was one of the finest of the pro- vincial amphitheatres, considerably excelling Mimes. It had three tiers of arches, and I see in an engraving made in the beginning of this century that caryatides were intro- duced between the arches of the uppermost story ; but whether this was in consequence of a tradition that had come down to the draughtsman from the seventeenth century, or a mere fanciful invention of his own, may still be doubtful. Very near to the amphitheatre was a theatre constructed on the usual Roman plan, but on a much larger scale than was common in Gaul. In consequence of measurements and calculations made by M. Chenavard, an archi- tect of Lyons, it appears that the Autun theatre must have afforded room for nearly thirty-four thousand spectators, while those of Orange and Aries could only seat about half that number. This gives some idea of the population of Augustodunum. The pres- ent municipality is erecting a new theatre, not on the same site ; but the comedies of Alexandre Dumas and Emile Ausrier will not O Autun. 153 be performed before such imposing audi- ences as those which listened to the plays of Plautus and Terence in the classic times of the city. There is, however, the consolation that the horrors of the amphitheatre are not likely to be repeated, unless some future century should go back to the barbarous pastimes of the Romans. Near to the theatre and the amphitheatre, but independently of both, the Romans had a fine artificial lake at Augustodunum for naval combats. Nature so favored the establish- ment of this lake by an abundantly flowing rivulet from the hills, and also by the natural hollowing of the ground near the theatre, that the Romans easily made a reservoir of great importance, and it has been calculated that the sports upon it could be witnessed by a hundred thousand spectators. Antiquarian writers give very fine accounts of the temples at Augustodunum, but artists who only care for what they see, will not find much to interest them in the way of temples. The structure which is called the " Temple of Janus " is like a very massive square tower, perfectly plain, with holes in it for windows. It does not in the least resemble our ordinary 154 Autitn. conception of a Roman temple as a structure of some elegance, adorned with columns and a pediment ; and although the presence of any relic of antiquity, however ugly, has always some influence upon the mind, there are few ruins in the world so large as the Temple of Janus which have so little artistic interest. It has been classed amongst historic monuments, as it deserves to be, but it is merely a piece of substantial building, not of architecture in any high sense. The little circular temples of Pluto and Proserpine, which still existed by the river-side two hun- dred and fifty years ago, and of which some fragments remained much later, had probably greater pretensions to beauty. The only other temple of which there is any remaining frag- ment is that of Apollo, which now consists simply of a lofty piece of wall with a niche in it, surrounded by modern houses and com- pletely hidden by them. Neither is it by any means absolutely certain that the temples bore in Roman times the names of the divinities which have since been attached to them. The one attributed to Pluto was called so on the strength of its resemblance to the Temple of Pluto at Rome ; that of Apollo, because it is Autun. 155 not very far from the middle of the Roman town, and Eumenes, in one of his orations, placed the Temple of Apollo in a central position. A marble head with abundant hair, and half a colossal hand, had been found near the temple which is attributed to Apollo before Edme Thomas wrote in the beginning of the seventeenth century. As for the little round temple close by the Arroux which was attrib- uted to Proserpine, it has also been supposed to belong to the god of the river Arroux, and Edme Thomas held a decided opinion that it must have been dedicated to Augustus. These are merely conjectural opinions of antiquaries on subjects of which nothing is positively known ; but as it is impossible either to talk or write about any edifice without hav- ing a name for it, and as it is tiresome to have to say each time we use it that the name is merely conjectural, these titles have obtained currency. It would be in the highest degree interest- ing to visit such a place as Augustodunum, which must have been a very perfect specimen of a Gallo-Roman city, with the special advan- tage of a very exceptionally fine situation ; but the mediaeval city must have been incom- 156 Autun. parably more to our taste, and perhaps even the town, as it exists at present, may have certain advantages over its predecessors, in spite of the constant destruction which has been going on for the last three hundred years. It has more variety, which is something, and it bears the traces of a longer past. We ought to remember, what we very easily forget, that when mediaeval architecture was new it had nothing whatever of that romantic power over the mind which it now derives from its an- tiquity and from the contrast between the pathos of its ruinous beauty and the unfeeling prose of a century so prosaic and so mechani- cal as ours. For us the walls and towers of a mediaeval town are connected with the descrip- tions of our modern poets and novelists, who have thrown over them all the enchantments of genius, and they are contrasted by us with the ugly and dirty buildings we see in our " hives of industry," which the mediaeval mind could no more imagine than it could foresee the electric telegraph. But I shall have more to say on this subject when we study what remains at Autun more in detail. Autun. 157 II. THE CATHEDRAL. HPHE classical conception of an architec- tural structure was that it should be complete in itself and perfectly harmonious, so that nothing could be added to it without visible excess, and nothing taken away from it without evident loss. The classical building was an organic whole, approaching in its com- pleteness to the completeness of animal forms, and the idea that such an organic whole could be improved by the addition of a foreign adjunct was an idea which could not occur to the classical mind. The well known and often quoted opening lines of the " Ars Poetica " of Horace express the classical horror of the incongruous. He was writing about poetry and painting ; had he written of architecture it would have been in the same strain, but nobody in the Augustan age could possibly have foreseen the wild experi- ments in architecture which have been made in mediaeval and modern times. The love of unity and perfection did not die out at once. The simple Romanesque 158 Autun. churches were as consistent as Greek temples, and, in the best examples, not less complete in plan. Subsequent modes of building have also produced works admirable for their unity, but the misfortune has been that the desire for unity in the Gothic ages was weaker than the desire to work in the prevailing fashion of the day. Gothic architects seem to have believed that current fashions were always a positive improvement on the art of their pred- ecessors. They appear to have been, at the same time, entirely unaware of the great artistic truth that superior things out of place are less desirable than inferior things which are where they ought to be. The human head on the horse's body of Horace was not a more monstrous violation of organic harmony than those which the Gothic builders com- mitted whenever a Romanesque edifice fell into their ruthless hands. The mixture of delicate appreciation of artistic beauty, when it was of the kind that happened to be in fashion, with perfect indifference to that which had gone out of fashion, displayed or betrayed in the works of mediaeval architects, is one of the strongest evidences we have to prove the wonderful power of fashion over the tastes and Autun. 159 feelings of mankind. The mediaeval architects were as much the slaves of fashion as Parisian fine ladies of the present day, the only differ- ence in their favor being that their fashion changed more slowly, a slowness due to the long time required for realizing changes of in- tention in architecture in comparison with the rapidity with which they may be carried out in costume. But if the mediaeval architects were less rapidly changeful than our modern dress- makers, they were artistically inferior to them in the care for unity and harmony. Every modiste in Paris takes the trouble to think, as she devises a costume, how the parts of it will go together. She will not sew the sleeve of a splendid dress to a plain one ; she will not encumber a dress conceived originally in one style with ornaments derived from a different and a totally incongruous style. Yet this is what, in a far more serious art, where the responsibilities are far greater and fanciful divergence much less excusable, the mediaeval architects did without hesitation and without regret. They appear to have acted blindly, to have had artistic impulses, but no power of criticism, and especially to have been carried forward by the impetus of a great general move- 160 Atttun. ment in one direction or another, an impetus which they do not seem to have had any dis- position to resist. These remarks may seem strangely severe to the reader who has been accustomed to hear the Middle Ages spoken of with great reverence as a time when builders were not only much more intelligent as artists, but much more conscientious and conservative than they are to-day. As for the intelligence of the mediae- val architects there can be no doubt that it was surprisingly high, considering the world they lived in ; but it was an intelligence strictly confined to their own style, like the practical intelligence of the uneducated in our own day, who do their own work well but appreciate nothing beyond it. With regard to their conservatism it was exactly that of a French revolutionist who knocks down an old political system in order to erect a new one in its place. It was not simply destructive, nor purely constructive either, but a combination of both, beginning with demolishing other men's performances in order to make room for one's own, as the monks scraped parchment manuscripts to cover them with their own elucubrations. Autun. 161 The history of Autun Cathedral, from the beginning down to the present year, is a good example of the fact that the architects of our own time, notwithstanding the hard things that have been so often said about their pre- sumption, are in reality the first who have paid any respect whatever to the conceptions and intentions of their predecessors. The Church of St. Lazarus, or Chapel as it was once called, was originally planned in the eleventh century, the idea being attributed to Robert I., Duke of Burgundy. It was so far finished in 1132 as to be consecrated by Pope Innocent II. in person, and in 1146 the re- mains of St. Lazarus were transferred to it. Who this St. Lazarus really was I do not pre- tend to say. It appears to be certain that he was a bishop of Marseilles, and the priests encourage the belief (without absolutely affirm- ing it to be well founded) that this bishop of Marseilles and Lazarus of Bethany were the same person. 1 To any one who believes in 1 The tone adopted by the Church on this subject may be judged of by the following quotation from an ecclesiastical history : " C'est a cet ensemble de circonstances que Ton attribue 1'arrive'e en Bourgogne du corps ve'ne're' de 1'^veque de Marseille, Saint Lazare, regard^ par la plus imposante des 1 62 Autun. this identity the remains of the bishop must be of great interest, and they are carried through the city annually in September in stately episcopal procession, to be venerated by the faithful. I mention these relics of Lazarus in this place because the church which is now the Cathedral of Autun was built specially to receive them, most likely in the full belief that they had belonged to Lazarus the resusci- tated, as it is not likely that the Duke of Burgundy would have rendered such extraor- dinary honors to any mere bishop of Mar- seilles. A tomb of great magnificence was erected to receive the bones on the spot now occupied by the high altar. This tomb was an edifice of white, red, and black marble, more than twenty feet high, and elaborately carved by a monk of artistic genius named Martin. The tomb of Lazarus was the glory of the church, and its raison d'etre as the church was built to contain and protect it ; but, unfortunately, it was intrusted to the keeping of the clergy in days when there was traditions comme le meme Lazare dont il est parld dans 1'dvangile et que Jdsus-Christ ressuscita quel ques jours avant sa Passion." Autun. 163 no State authority to protect ecclesiastical buildings against them. Of all human beings, an ignorant clergy are the most dangerous guardians of churches. As a French archi- tect observed to me, " It is like asking wolves to guard sheep." The consequence of their guardianship in this case has been that the tomb of Lazarus has vanished, some of the marble in it being employed for purposes which will be explained later. As the church of St. Lazarus at first ex- isted it was a complete conception, having the merit of perfect artistic unity. We shall soon see how ruthlessly this unity was after- wards destroyed, in deference to newer fash- ions of building. If I were to describe the first architecture as simply Romanesque, the word would convey but a partially true impression. What is usually understood by Romanesque architecture is a style retaining the round arch from ancient Roman work, but with very little else of a classical character. There are, however, examples in which the classic influence is much more generally vis- ible ; and of these Autun is one of the most remarkable. It is generally believed and is, indeed, so probable as to be allowably 164 Autun. assumed for a certainty that the reason for this must have been the remains of an- tiquity at Autun itself; which, in the eleventh century, were far more abundant and far more perfect than at the present day. When the church of St. Lazarus was built, the am- phitheatre was in existence and probably in fine preservation. The architectural remains of the theatre may still have been imposing, the Roman gates still comparatively numer- ous, the temples not yet demolished. Sur- rounded by these examples of classical Roman architecture some of which were certainly very conspicuous by their size, and others attractive by their elegance the church- builders of the eleventh and twelfth centuries would naturally be subjected to the kind of in- fluence which art-work already accomplished has over fresh production, especially when the fresh production is a new beginning. In this sense it is not too much to say that Autun Cathedral is the fruit of an eleventh- century Renaissance; a Renaissance preced- ing Gothic, as a subsequent classical move- ment followed Gothic and replaced it. If we examine one of the bays of Autun Ca- thedral, we find that the massive piers are Autun. 165 decorated with fluted pilasters ; and so are the little piers or wall-spaces between the small arches in the upper story of the Roman Porte (fArroux. The arcade of the triform m consists of round arches on thin fluted clas- sical pilasters. The cornices and mouldings are classic in taste; and the widest divergence from classical precedent is in the great arches, which are pointed, showing the beginning of the Gothic tendency. A fluted pilaster is carried above the triforium on each side to the springing of the roof; where it supports a simple flat rib or projection forming a dis- tinct round arch over the nave, the space between these arches being simply vaulted. The windows of the clear-story are plain, round-arched, Romanesque windows, in har- mony with the arcade of the triforium (except for the absence of classical decoration). In the space left between the heads of the pointed arches and the string-course on which stand the pilasters of the triforium, there is a band of sculptured decoration, composed en- tirely of large roses and running quite round the edifice, being interrupted only by the large pilasters. The original Romanesque church had a 1 66 Autun. triple apse, consisting of a large semicircle for the nave, and two smaller semicircles for the aisles. The apse has been altered or hidden since it was built, as I will explain later ; for the present I am trying to describe the church in its first perfect state. Viollet le Due believed that the round central apse went up to the full height of the nave, and he drew it so in a design which was engraved and published in the Revue Generate de f Architecture for 1853; but this was a mis- take which he afterwards acknowledged with the readiness of a true student, which he always was. The cause of his error was the band of roses which goes round the apse, and therefore seems to imply that the primitive architecture was continued at that height with the triforium above it, and windows above the triforium, as Viollet le Due repre- sented it in his drawing of a restored interior; but, in fact, the roses in the apse are of plas- ter, and much more recent than the stone originals elsewhere. There is evidence that the original apse was not very high, that it was lighted by two rows of small Romanesque windows, and separated from the choir by a large arch springing from capitols still Atitun. 167 existing. The apse, in fact, must have been one of those Romanesque apses common in churches of that period, which do not aim at an appearance of imposing height, but rather, if I may so express it, at an appearance of intimacy and snugness, as if the altar ought to have a home of its own, distinct from the body of the church, and comfortably pro- portioned, as to height, to the limited area enclosed by the semicircular wall. There are charming examples of this at Semur-en-Brion- nais and in the church of St. Genou in the department of the Indre. The whole of the church of St. Lazarus was originally finished in the kind of Romanesque which I have just described. To complete the description I have only to add that there were no side-chapels beyond the aisles, and that the aisles were lighted by windows with round arched heads (and, of course, no mull- ions or tracery) of the same kind as those in the clear-story, but larger. There was a fine arched doorway at the end opposite the altar, which from the position in which the church is built happens to be the north, and not the west end ; and another of similar character, but less magnificent, in the east 1 68 Autun. transept. There was a tower above the in- tersection of the transepts and nave, but of this tower no drawing has come down to the present day. All that is known about it is that the tower must have been of great weight, for a reason which the reader will meet with shortly. It was, probably, a heavy stone structure of two or more stories, the weight of the wall not much lightened by the aper- tures : and there are reasons for believing that the pointed pyramidal roof must have been covered thickly with lead. In the twelfth century (so I am told by a learned French architect) the art of laminating lead was unknown in France, and it had to be beaten out with hammers, so that it was always thick in comparison with the sheet- lead of modern times. The present cathedral is celebrated for its vast and magnificent porch, which, being of Romanesque architecture and a striking thing in itself, is naturally (and I believe invariably) supposed by visitors to have formed part of the original structure. The truth is, however, that the first building had no porch whatever, and that the noble flight of stairs in the present porch, which produces so grand an Autun. 169 effect that the first builders of the cathedral got the credit for it, is in fact altogether modern. It is not even a restoration. There never were any such steps there at all until the nineteenth century ; in the old time there was nothing but a slope of irregular ground with access to the doorway through a hole in the eastern wall of the porch, altogether a much less imposing arrangement. Externally, the Romanesque church must have appeared simple, but harmonious. The walls of the aisles were quite plain and relieved only by the slightly projecting buttresses of the style, answering in situation to the piers of the interior. The windows were so plain as to have scarcely any decorative effect except the slight one derived from the recurrence of their uniform arches. The most decorative things in the whole building were the arcades be- tween the windows and roof of the nave, and those on the front of the transepts. There was also considerable richness in the door- ways, to which the plain walls gave additional interest. In the great arch over the northern door was a most elaborate tympanum repre- senting the Last Judgment, and in the arch over the east door was another tympanum, of 170 Autun. less importance, representing Adam and Eve in the Garden, when they hid themselves after eating the forbidden fruit and God found them. If the church of St. Lazarus had come down to us in its first state, it would not have had the variety and historic interest that it possesses to-day, but it would have been a very complete and congruous work of art. Certain changes occurred, however, which made it impossible to keep the building as it was at first. The soil was treacherous. The north wall with the great doorway in it showed unmistakable signs of falling out- wards ; the great vault of the nave began to push out the walls of the clear-story. The exact measures of these displacements are for the north wall between i ft. and i ft. 4 in., and for the outward pushing of the vault of the nave, about the same on each side, making a total widening of about twenty-eight inches. Ruin was avoided by two plans, which in reality amounted to the same expedient. The north front was prevented from falling out- wards by the addition of a gigantic porch, for which the architect had the excellent excuse that in those days there were great numbers Autnn. 171 of leprous pilgrims who came crowding about the door and needed some shelter from the inclemencies of the weather. I do not know if these poor lepers were admitted into the body of the church, but through the open doors they would see, in the distance, the great marble tomb of St. Lazarus, the Lazarus of Bethany, as they believed, who had lost health and life, and recovered both by a miracle like that they vainly hoped for. Thus the weakness of the building, or rather the insecurity of its foundations, led to an addition which, so far from having the ap- pearance of an excrescence, looks like a first thought of artistic genius. The supporting of the side walls, to prevent them from falling outwards, cannot be considered so fortunate. Here the architect had recourse to the more commonplace device of flying buttresses, not, however, so commonplace in those days as it has since become, for these are amongst the earliest "examples. The architect at Au- tun who strengthened the cathedral in this way at the close of the twelfth century accom- plished his purpose effectually by strong walls set at right angles to those of the aisles and projecting far, these walls being weighted 172 Autun. above by massive pinnacles, from the bases of which sprang the arches that supported the walls of the clear-story. Another evil effect of the state of the foundations, or of the soil in which they were laid, was that the weight of the great tower pushed down the four piers on which it was erected, so as to disjoin them from the inner walls in the four angles, causing a break of six inches. Notwithstanding this, it might have been left with that degree of disruption for centuries if a great fire had not occurred by which the tower was destroyed. Material evidence of this fire has been found during recent restorations. It is supposed that the woodwork of the roof must have been set on fire by lightning. The lead ran down upon the adjoining roofs of transepts and nave, which were also fired. I do not know the exact date of this event, and the date is not of any consequence as concerning the architecture of the building. What concerns us is the date of the new tower and the new roofs, which we know. Cardinal Rolin, in 1480, built the new tower and many other things, of which more will be said presently. Like all builders of the Gothic times, he and Autun. 173 his architects paid no respect whatever to the character of the building they had to deal with. It seemed to them perfectly natural and right to erect a Gothic tower with a tall spire on a Romanesque cathedral. Their tower was beautiful in itself, and their spire of extraordinary lightness and elegance. The state of the foundations suggested the neces- sity of avoiding useless weight, so the spire, which in itself was to be one hundred and fifty- eight feet high from the top of the tower, had to depend for its strength on excellence of construction rather than on quantity of mate- rial. It is entirely of stone, and without any internal support whatever. Seen from the inside it presents the appearance of a room of which the walls converge as you look up, and I was never in any building that con- veyed the impression of prodigious height so powerfully. From base to apex there is noth- ing but the smooth stone walls, and, although the actual height is not much more than the nave of Amiens cathedral, the narrowness of the area and the convergence of the sides make it seem incomparably more lofty. The effect on the mind is increased when we are told that the walls are seven inches thick at 174 Ant Tin. the base and six towards the summit. " If people could see the stone used in the spire of Autun," said an architect, " in a solid mass, they would be surprised by the small quantity of it." The Cardinal's way of dealing with the apse was as follows : His Gothic taste prob- ably disliked a Romanesque apse, as not imposing enough and not sufficiently well lighted, especially if the six small round- headed windows were filled with colored glass, so he did not pull the apse to pieces, nor even remove the stonework of the win- dows ; he simply built them up, as people used to do in old houses when the window duty was first established. He removed the stone roof of the apse, which had been built in the Romanesque fashion, en queue de four, took down the great arch called the " arche triomphale" and left the walls of the apse standing as they were, and even the capitals from which the arch had sprung. He then carried up the wall to the full height of the nave, piercing it with five great lancet lights and two smaller ones, their sills being on the top of the old apse wall. As the old apse had only been supported by the slightly Autun. 175 projecting buttresses usual in Romanesque architecture, it was thought necessary to for- tify them by strong ones, to support the wall, above which (on the Gothic principle) was a weak structure cut by seven slits in the shape of windows. From that date the Gothic devastation went on very vigorously in the aisles. The im- provers pulled down the old walls with the simple windows, decorated the openings with fringes of senseless cusps, and erected a series of chapels in the flamboyant style, to oc- cupy the spaces between the great buttresses. Most of these chapels are heavy and inele- gant, which cannot be said of the Gothic apse. A very strange piece of Gothic con- struction is that which supports the organ loft. It consists of half arches with abundant cusps, some of which come in awkwardly and contradictorily, yet this work is said to be of the same period as the spire. The flam- boyant chapels were begun at that time also, but continued later, in the sixteenth century. A vestry was erected as a distinct building outside the cathedral to the west, and it may have helped to strengthen the wall of the 176 Autun. western transept. This vestry is a not inele- gant specimen of flamboyant Gothic. The general scheme of it is simple, but the parts are disposed with that freedom from the idea of regular and symmetrical arrangement which marked the Gothic, as opposed to the classical spirit. Although there is one window in each defined space between string-courses above and below and buttresses on each side, the window is not inserted in the middle of the space, but freely to any side that might suit internal convenience. The little tower is pretty, but it owes much of its prettiness to its uppermost story and its pyramidal roof, which were added quite recently by the re- storers. The same restorers have done a good deal to the vestry in other ways, giving it a new roof and a new pierced parapet, the parapet being an exact copy of the original one, which had fallen into decay. If this vestry were an independent building it would probably have some celebrity as an elegant specimen of French Gothic applicable to domestic archi- tecture, for a modern house might be built as a development of the same idea, but in its present situation it is overwhelmed by the mass of the cathedral, with which it has very Autun. 177 little architectural relationship, and is also hidden from public view by being in a small enclosure where it can hardly be seen in its entirety. It was very unlikely that this cathedral would get through the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries without grievous injury by destruction or addition of some kind. The clergy in the later Renaissance had a pas- sion for classical marble columns and panels, just as in the Gothic times they had a passion for high roofs and tall windows. They have always indulged themselves in these passing fancies whenever they have been able, with the most absolute disregard to artistic unity. I have said that Cardinal Rolin walled up all the windows in the Romanesque apse. It was reserved for the clergy of the eighteenth cen- tury to line this apse nearly up to the sills of the new Gothic windows with huge panels of magnificent red Sicilian marble, divided by columns of gray antique marble, with gilded capitals, and surrounded by frames and mould- ings of another variety. On a cornice sup- ported by these columns stand a number of little, fat, gilded angels, like Cupids, which hold garlands,, and are otherwise elegantly 178 Autun. occupied. The marble for this panelling was, I have been told, partly got from ancient Roman remains and partly from the grand tomb of St. Lazarus, which was used as a quarry. It is curious that Voltaire should have had some influence over the cathedral at Autun, but it is believed that he caused some destruc- tion there, and was also the involuntary cause of some preservation. He went to stay at the chateau of Montjeu, where he attended the marriage of the Due de Richelieu. Dunns: o o his visit he condescended to look at the cathedral, and so ridiculed what appeared to him the barbarism of its architecture, and especially of its sculptural adornments, that the canons had the whole of the great tym- panum plastered over to hide the composition of the Last Judgment. In doing this they preserved it from damage during the Revolu- tion, and it remained so hidden for seventy years ; after which lapse of time its existence was totally forgotten, and some gentlemen at Autun discovered it, suspecting that there might be carvings under the plaster. As to the other tympanum, that over the door of the east transept, representing Adam and Eve A lit tin. 179 hiding themselves in Paradise, it was broken to pieces and carted off, the fragments being afterwards used in building shops in the town. One of these fragments, representing Eve under a bush, was found during an alteration, and has been preserved. In the mouldings round the great tympanum there is a broad hollow originally filled with a succession of figure-groups, which the clergy of Voltaire's time diligently cleared away in order to com- plete the classical simplification begun by the plastering of the tympanum. They also had doors made in the approved Renaissance style, and altogether did what little their limited means allowed them towards the taking away of all character from the edifice committed to their charge. We now come to the nineteenth century, the epoch of Viollet le Due, the most learned and the least prejudiced of all architects who ever lived in France at least so I sincerely believe. Viollet le Due, unlike all his prede- cessors, had so great a respect for unity in art that he would avoid, whenever possible, the addition of any feature to a building which was not in harmony with the original design. His fault, if it was a fault, consisted in a steady 180 Autun. desire to get back to the first state of the structure, before irreverential successors to the original architect had made additions which he could never have even conceived. In dealing with such a building as the cathe- dral of Autun, in which the additions in another style were too important to be removed, Viollet le Due must have felt an irritating desire to go further than the general opinion was prepared for. If the cathedral of Autun had been his private property, I doubt whether he would have long resisted the temp- tation to pull down the Gothic tower and spire and replace them with a tower of purely Romanesque design ; but I do not doubt, I am perfectly certain, that he would not have tolerated the Gothic apse. He would have restored the Romanesque apse, which still exists behind plaster and marble, in all its integrity ; he would have cleared away the marble panels, columns, gilded Cupids, and the rest, and horrified the ecclesiastical mind by the destruction of the tall windows above them. He and M. Durand were restrained from this line of action by a respect for public opinion, though I fancy that if they had pulled Autun. 181 down the Gothic apse suddenly and without warning, the public would have accepted the fait accompli &Kt a little tempest of complaint about the marbles. In all other respects the action of the modern restorers has been in the direction of the Romanesque restoration wher- ever possible. I have said that the first roofs were burned when the lead trickled down from the burning tower. Those roofs were replaced by Gothic architects with new ones of far higher pitch. Of late years it has been found necessary, in consequence of the decay of the Gothic roofs, to proceed to a new re- placement, and this has been done with the Romanesque pitch. The chancel retains its Gothic roof, the nave and transept have the new pitch, which is a restoration of the Romanesque roof. This new pitch was ob- jected to as taking away from the apparent dignity and importance of the edifice ; and there is no doubt that high roofs look more imposing than moderately inclined ones, but there is a great compensation in the dis- engagement of the tower. The tower would o o look much better if the chancel roof were brought down to the level adopted for that of the nave. The two small Romanesque towers 1 82 Autun. are entirely new. There was no authority to go upon, as the original towers had never been completed. Under these circumstances M. Durand designed two towers with pyram- idal stone roofs entirely in pure Romanesque taste, yet not free from one or two rather serious objections. The first is that they are seen from the country on all sides along with the Gothic spire, with which they have nothing in common, and which is, unluckily for them, so very elegant that they appear heavy in comparison. To this objection the architects answered, that as the north front was Roman- esque they could not do otherwise than finish it with towers in the same style ; but I am not quite sure that this is the case. With all the deference which is due to the superior acquirements of professional men I imagine that there would have been sound artistic reasons for another course. As the great spire was too beautiful to be destroyed, I would boldly have conformed the smaller towers to it, built their upper stories in Gothic, just as if Cardinal Rolin's architect had dealt with them, and finished them with elegant Gothic spires younger sisters of the great one inferior in stature, but not in grace. Autun. 183 Such a course would have given the cathedral a delightful harmony in all distant views, and would not have injured the north front when seen near, for the simple reason that, with the neighboring houses where they are, it is never possible to see the porch and the twin towers at the same time. The second objection to these towers is, that although Romanesque in style they are not in the flat classical Roman- esque of the church itself, but in a less refined, more massive, and rounder Romanesque, ap- proaching, in character to our own Norman. It may also be objected that the similarity of the two stories is monotonous, and that one story with rather higher openings would have avoided this repetition. I imagine, too, that it is rather a fault in construction to put an arch very near to another opening and just under it. The eye expects an arch to carry some- thing massive and weighty, like a good space of blank wall or else a roof. I know that this objection would apply to many superposed arcades, but I have always felt it to be of some importance so far as the satisfaction of the eye is concerned. 1 1 If the reader has ever watched the building of a common stone bridge, he must have felt how much more satisfactory 184 Autun. In the course of the restoration, it was necessary to reconstruct the four piers under the central tower, and to allow of this being done, the tower and spire were carried upon an oak scaffolding of enormous strength, the arches being kept in their places by gigantic iron screws. This was one of the prettiest pieces of engineering in modern architectural operations. The unity of the cathedral might have gained if the spire had fallen and been replaced by a tower in the style of the twelfth century, but the effect of the spire in the landscape could with difficulty be rivalled. It is in itself a great finial, not of the church only, but of the whole city, which it finishes in what seems so natural and inevitable a manner, that it is difficult to realize how Roman Augustodunum must have looked without it. and substantial the bridge seemed when a few courses of masonry had been added above the arch than it did when the arch only had been just constructed. There is a substantial reason for this, which is that an arch is stronger and more likely to keep its shape when it has a good weight on it. Autun. 185 III. THE LAPIDARY MUSEUM AND THE ROMAN GATES. A MONGST the many hard things that are ** said so frequently against the nineteenth century, the accusation of a want of reverence for the past is one of the most common. Cer- tainly it may be admitted that the authorities of our time (especially municipal authorities in old cities) have destroyed many vestiges to make room for well-lighted, modern streets, and anything that stands in the way of what seems a desirable straight line is likely to be removed; but it may be put to the credit of our age that we do not regard this destruction of memorials without some feeling of regretful interest, and some desire to preserve a trace of them for our descendants. In this we differ from the men of all preceding ages. If they preserved anything, it was by happy neglect ; when they wanted a site, already occupied by a building, they simply removed the impediment to the present scheme without taking thought for the inquirers of the future. The idea of founding a museum was an idea so foreign to the minds of the Middle Ages 1 86 Atitun. that they could not have entertained it. The present fashion was everything with them. So far from having any tender sentimental interest in the past, like the romantic inter- est of our poets and novelists, or any pictur- esque interest like that felt by our painters, they had not even the scientific interest of the archaeologist. The results of this deadly indifference are, for us, infinitely deplorable. The Middle Ages were exactly the time for founding archaeological museums, because in those ages the destruction of classic monu- ments was steadily going forward ; and if there had only been museums and archaeologists just then, the smaller and more precious parts of ancient work might have been preserved forever. Augustodunum was a Roman city of real magnificence; this we know positively from what has come down to us, from the great mosaics, the large and elaborately sculp- tured marble capitals, and the important scale of the places of public amusement. During the centuries when Roman Gaul was becom- ing mediaeval Burgundy and France, the Roman Augustodunum was destroyed gradu- ally, being used as a great quarry in which hewn stones might be had for the taking. A it tun. 187 That was the time for founding a lapidary museum, instead of which the museum was founded in 1861, when the Middle Age de- stroyers had done their best to efface every vestige of classic times, and when the people of the Renaissance and of modern France had in their turn destroyed the mediaeval city. After these two great destructions as nearly complete, both of them, as leisurely persever- ance could make them the modern archae- ologists in the latter half of the nineteenth century come and collect a few fragments, buy a little plot of land, and set their mutilated old stones round it under a shed ! All honor to them for their care and indus- try, but such archaeology is a melancholy busi- ness. " Too late ! too late ! ! " is the inscription that it finds on every fragment. It is like picking up pieces of blistered canvas when a picture-gallery has been destroyed by fire sad reminders of a splendor utterly passed away, and which a little care and prudence at the right time might have preserved so easily! The founders of this modest little Lapidary Museum were very happy in their choice of a locality. There was a certain chapel, dedi- 1 88 Autun. cated to St. Nicholas, and built in the twelfth century, which for ages had been disused as a place of worship, and employed for various common uses as private property. Wonderful to relate, it had not greatly suffered from these changes ; probably, even, it had suffered less than it would have done in the hands of Mediaeval and Renaissance ecclesiastics. A farmer may fill a church with hay, a cooper may fill it with tubs and barrels, without alter- ing the conception of the architect, but an ignorant priest can collect money for supposed improvements, and do more harm in a few months than mere neglect would achieve in as many centuries. It was determined, there- fore, to purchase this chapel of St. Nicholas and a bit of land about it for the safe keeping of the old stones. The chapel was dealt with tenderly ; to say that it was " restored " would convey a false impression. It was simply put into a condition of necessary repair, with a plain new roof and floor. It possesses a very interesting Romanesque apse, once decorated in fresco, above the colonnade, and there was also a border of fresco decoration about the great arch before it. No attempt has been made to brighten or complete these old Autun. 189 frescos, which remain exactly as when found faded, mysterious, and probably far more interesting than in their crude freshness. The apse itself is in a state of quite perfect preser- vation. It has the usual round arches and slender columns, with pretty sculptured cap- itals. If the student looks for some reminis- cence of classic architecture, such as we found in the Cathedral, he will not be entirely disap- pointed. To the right and the left, but hidden from the nave by the projection of the larger pillars, are two pilasters, fluted like those on the piers of St. Lazarus, just these two, as if to remind us that we are in a Roman city. Another point of similarity to the cathedral is the great arch itself, which, instead of being round, is pointed. The rest of the building is not of especial interest in itself, except the Romanesque doorway, still very well preserved. Its contents compensate for the bareness of the walls. There are a few odd shafts of columns, or fragments of shafts, of various materials, syenite from Egypt, and different marbles and granites either found by the Romans in Gaul or brought by them from a distance. These shafts are used as supports Autun. for pieces of cornice or for capitals that did not belong to them, and so the architectural effect is, of course, very incongruous ; but the visitor soon understands that he is in a col- lection of odds and ends. There are some very fine Roman capitals so preserved in the chapel, but unluckily all mutilated; still enough remains to prove the past magnifi- cence of the city, as it has never been custo- mary to erect great marble columns with elaborate carvings in a village. In the apse are preserved some fragments of that great tomb of St. Lazarus which once adorned the Cathedral, and it appears from these (there are more of them in a heap somewhere up in the attics of the Cathedral itself) that the workers in marble of the twelfth century were fully acquainted with the kind of engraving on marble and filling up with black cement which was practised by the Baron de Triqueti in the works he did for Queen Victoria at Windsor. The drawings for the tomb of St. Lazarus are not of much value as draw- ings, but the knowledge of the engraving process shown by the artists is perfect, and the inserted black substance is as sound and hard everywhere as the marble. There are also Azitun. 191 statues of Martha and Mary from the Cathe- dral, of the twelfth century, showing little sci- ence but a good deal of human feeling. The most interesting thing here to antiquaries and theologians is the famous t^&k inscription, which they come from all parts to see. The reader may find a full account of it in the forty- second session of the " Congres Scientifique de France," volume I., page 49. As for me, I am far too wary to entangle myself in these deep matters even to the extent of modestly copying the letters, as I should immediately receive a number of epistles convicting me of ignorance. All I venture to say is that the stone is a white-looking piece of marble, broken into fragments, which are pieced to- gether again, and on which may be made out a Greek acrostic, of which the lines begin with the letters i, x, 0, v, and something which is sup- posed to stand for a Sigma, making the mystic fish. It is believed to belong to the third or fourth century; and as it seems to favor the idea of transubstantiation, it has, of course, a peculiar interest for theologians. 1 1 Here is an accepted French translation, for which I am not responsible: " O race divine de ixdvs celeste, rec,ois avec un coeur plein 192 Aiitun. In the middle of the museum is a large mosaic, found where the railway station now stands, and presented to the museum by the company. The design of it is regular, with common Roman decorative forms, but without any particular artistic merit or originality of conception. It has been said that the colors of this mosaic are dull, but the simple truth is that the tesserae want repolishing. A kind of varnish is sometimes used to revive mosaics for museums, when they are not trodden upon, and it might wisely be employed in this instance. There is little that is notable in sculpture, most of the figures being rudely carved images of Gallo-Roman household divinities, but there are some exquisitely beau- tiful fragments of Renaissance work which at one time decorated the chapel of Denis Poillot in an old church near the present cathedral, de respect la vie immortelle parmi les mortels. Rajeunis ton ame, 6 mon ami ! dans les eaux divines, par les flots e'ternels de la sagesse qui donne la vraie richesse. Re9ois I'aliment ddlicieux du Sauveur des saints : Prends, mange et bois, tu tiens ixdvs dans tes mains. " '\x6vs accorde-moi cette grace, je la de'sire ardemment, maitre et sauveur ; que ma mere repose en paix, je t'en con- jure, lumiere des morts. Aschandeus, mon pere, toi que je che'ris, avec ma tendre mere et tous mes parents dans la paix d' 'idvs souviens-toi de ton Pectorius." Autun. 193 now pulled down. The design of these is of the most masterly elegance and unsparing elaboration. So fine is the work that if it were in some close-grained wood it might serve for delicate furniture, whilst the designs are so complex that merely to copy them in drawing would require very long and pains- taking labor; indeed, only the photograph could do them perfect justice. After the rude Romanesque work, and even the comparatively rude and stiff designs of the Gothic ages, it is like a new revelation of human skill and knowledge to come upon sculpture so accom- plished as this, and to think that the lovely Renaissance chapel, of which these fragments were only a part, was carelessly sacrificed and the stones of it cast aside as worthless stones rich with the unsparing toil of a master ! There is a fine antique sarcophagus in white marble, with many figures, representing the hunting of the boar of Calydon, but this was not .found in Augustodunum. It came originally from Aries, and thence to Lyons, and by the gift of Bishop Devoncoux, of Evreux, it passed into the Lapidary Museum at Autun. There is another sarcophagus of '3 194 Autun. antique origin, with its original inscription defaced and Gothic ornaments added. This was used, according to tradition, for the re- mains of a saint of the seventh century called St. Francovee in French accounts, who dwelt in solitude in the Morvan. Since his bones became dust the sarcophagus was the property of a nobleman, Baron Pigenat, who desired to be buried in it ; but when he was dead his friends discovered a difficulty which had never been thought of, they found that he was too tall for his sarcophagus, and from an intelligi- ble feeling they did not like to amputate his legs, so they buried him in a common coffin and left the sarcophagus for many years in the churchyard at Tavernay, the village near his residence. Afterwards his successor gave it to the Lapidary Museum, which owes the treasure entirely to the stature of the first baron. Round the little plot of ground, which is now the garden of the Lapidary Museum, there is a shed on pillars to shelter the re- mains, for which there is not room enough in the chapel. Here are a number of Roman tombstones of the third or fourth century after Christ, generally very rude in their carving, Aiitun. 195 yet intelligibly representing the occupation pursued by the dead man during his lifetime. More interesting than these are the remains of a sarcophagus in gray marble, which once held the body of the great and powerful Queen Brunehaut, one of the most energetic women of the Middle Ages : accused by Clotaire II. of the death of ten kings, and condemned by him to be dragged to death by horses ; a subject which, dreadful as it is, has more than once been effectively represented in painting, when the horses have come to a stop at last in some melancholy valley, with the pale corpse of the dead queen lying mo- tionless behind them. Her sepulchre was at Autun, at the Abbey of St. Martin, not far from where the Lapidary Museum now stands, so that the only memorial of her now remain- ing is very nearly in its right place. * There is little else of note in the museum except some Roman capitals in white marble and other materials, like those preserved in the chapel. One great use, however, of such a museum has been admirably shown by the housing of part of Jean Goujon's famous Fountain of the Pelican. This fountain was erected near the Cathedral in Renaissance 196 Autun. times ; but, although the date of it is compar- atively recent, the stone was too tender and friable, and, to prevent it from falling, the upper part of it was removed and lodged in the museum. It is in an advanced stage of decay, many of the stones having retained little of their original form, but others are still sharp enough here and there for the de- sign to be easily made out ; and a very beauti- ful design it is. It is proposed to make a new copy, as accurate as possible, of the whole, and carry all that remains of the original to the Lapidary Museum, a much more reverent and rational mode of proceeding than any at- tempt at restoration of Jean Goujon's work. To my feeling it is one of the most perfect little structures of its kind to be met with any- where ; the proportions are so harmonious and the lines of the columns, cornices, and arches so ingeniously contrived to produce a great effect of variety. The pelican on the summit is piercing her breast for her young. In drawings of the fountain she is often repre- sented as a natural sort of pelican, but in the original stonework she is strictly convention- alized, so as to go well with the architectural idea. Again, in the drawings I find the vases Autun. 197 made heavier than Jean Goujon made them ; and indeed it is never safe to trust to anything but photographs for representations of any- thing really elegant in architecture, as the elegance of it depends upon nicely observed proportions, which few draughtsmen are care- ful to notice. Of the remaining Roman gates, that which is commonly called la Porte cCArroux (as being near the river) is the more beautiful. It is the gate leading to Paris, and stands on the steep slope of land going down to the bridge. Its flat pilasters, fluted and crowned with carved capitals, are extremely elegant, and very probably taught a lesson in delicacy to the architects of the Romanesque cathedral. There is also a very rich cornice, elaborately carved, between the large archways and the little arcade above them. Generally what strikes the visitor in this gate is the fine pres- ervation of the masonry, the sharpness of the stones, showing that if it had been left un- touched from the time of the Romans it would still have been in good condition. Within the arches there are large grooves for the doors, which were evidently raised and low- ered by winches and chains. In the other 198 Aiitun. gateway the Porte St. Andre, leading to Besan9on, this system does not appear to have been followed. From certain holes in the walls, on each side, it is evident that the door was barred by strong beams placed across it. These were first inserted into holes on the right, and then the other ends of them were dropped into grooves on the left, which are still visible. These Roman gates were origi- nally flanked by towers for their defence, and the height of the chemin de ronde, or passage for troops above the archways, gives the exact height of the Roman wall, which appears to have been thirteen metres to the top of the battlements. It is deeply to be regretted that the Porte des marbres, which was far more splendid than the two now remaining, being richly adorned with sculpture, should have been destroyed during the Middle Ages ; but in those times there was no law in France for the preservation of historical monuments. Autun. 199 IV. HOUSES. HPHE Roman city no doubt greatly sur- passed the mediaeval in the magnifi- cence of its public buildings, except that the temples, however rich in marble capitals and mosaic pavements, could never produce so fine a distant effect as the towers of the churches ; but, notwithstanding the luxury of wealthy Gallo-Romans and the perfection of their habitations according to their own ideas of orderly and comfortable arrangement, I am fully convinced that the mediaeval city must have been incomparably more interesting than its predecessor if considered as a collection of dwelling-places. The tiresome regularity of the Roman streets is in itself quite enough to prove that the houses must have been com- paratively uninteresting. A learned antiquary, M. Roidot-Deleage, seized upon every oppor- tunity for studying the foundations of Augus- todunum which presented itself during a space of forty years, and the result of his labors was a map in which every block of Roman houses is marked in its exact locality, and every 2oo Autun. Roman street is drawn from one wall of the city to its opposite. 1 So completely had M. Roidot-Deleage mastered his problem that he became able to predict the exact spots in which the corner-stones of Roman street- blocks would be found when excavations took place, and his predictions were always verified. All the local antiquaries accept his map as being perfectly trustworthy, and if it is so the inference is that the Roman habitations were arranged with the most mechanical regularity in square blocks or " islets " of building, as the French call them, all exactly alike in their general ground-plan, and measuring about a hundred English yards on each side, the ordi- nary streets being about ten metres wide and the two principal ones about sixteen, half of which was occupied by causeways. The length of the principal street, which crossed the city from north to south, from the Paris gate to the gate leading to Rome, was 1,570 metres, and, like all the others, it was per- 1 This map, which is one of the most thorough pieces of archaeological work ever executed, received a medal from the Socie'te Franchise de Numismatique et d'Archdologie in the year 1868 as the best existing map of a Gallo-Roman city. It was published in the " Me*moires de la Socie'te' duenne," New Series. Vol. I. 1872. Autun. 20 1 fectly straight. Here we have just the plan of some new American town, the best of all plans for convenience of access to every house, and also for ventilation, but the worst for architectural and picturesque effect. It is believed that the houses, except a few resi- dences of great personages, were always low and small. The straight lines of the streets are in themselves evidence that the straight line must have predominated in the fronts. Streets without curves, houses without pro- jections, and probably with low roofs and a poor skyline, like modern English or Ameri- can building of the most utilitarian character; these, as far as our knowledge goes, appear to have been the most prevalent characteristics of Augustodunum. Mediaeval Autun was a very different place. Its streets curved in every direction, and the same street varied in its width. So far from keeping to any rigorous alignement, the houses sometimes projected in advance of the line and sometimes withdrew, as it were, into recesses. There is evidence that the mediaeval streets widened and narrowed like running streams, and that sometimes a house projected into the street as a rock does in water, an incon- 2O2 Autun. venience that the mediaeval people do not seem to have minded. The idea of the street as the Romans had it, and as we moderns have it again, does not seem to have occurred to the mediaeval people at all ; they do not appear to have cared for the street in itself, but only for the houses, and the street was nothing but a means of communication from one house to another. Neither was there any sort of conformity in the house-building ; there were no Improvement Acts, there was no Baron Haussmann to decree that the windows should be all alike on the same story for a hundred houses, as in the Rue de Rivoli. Every man built his dwelling according to the conditions determined by his taste and his means, often adorning it with varied and fanciful ornament, and always showing art in it of some kind, were it only in the mouldings of a beam or the careful finish of wood or stone work about a window. The remnants of the mediaeval city are not nearly as numer- ous at the present day as they were a hundred years ago, but there are still enough of them to give a good idea of what it must have been, a quaint place with many comfortable houses and a few splendid ones. Autun. 203 A sketcher has many opportunities which do not occur to others. People are interested in what he does, and their interest soon passes into kindness. I have almost invariably found that if I sketched an old house I could exam- ine every nook and corner of it, generally by the spontaneous invitation of the inhabitant. In this way a sketcher who cares for more than the outside appearance of his subject may learn many curious details about the internal arrangements of old dwellings, and conse- quently about the domestic life of the past. One characteristic seems to have been invari- able. A small modern house is a place with a number of tiny rooms in it, but a small mediaeval house had always at least one rela- tively very large room, and even the great me- diaeval houses had comparatively few rooms, but those were of handsome size. The reason is that the mediaeval people cared much less for privacy than we do, and lived more to- gether, after the manner of our own lower classes. In such a house as that in the Rue Cocand, at Autun, now inhabited by M. Gue- nard, the locksmith, the large room on the ground floor, which is now his workshop, was formerly the general family living-room, and 204 the large room above it the general bed- chamber. It would have a bed in each corner, made into a sort of tent with great curtains, for the degree of privacy which satisfied the mediaeval mind. A few little places for kitchen and servants completed the necessary arrange- ments. Even in the smaller country chateaux the four-bed system prevailed. Our modern preference for separation in sleeping apartments, even at the cost of mak- ing them very small, is certainly a great ad- vance in civilization, but it is not an unmixed advantage. The cramped and confined French townsman of limited means hardly ever knows what it is to be in a large room, but his medi- aeval forefathers enjoyed that luxury every day. A French gentleman of my acquaintance, who is a great archaeologist and has studied past ages till his tastes and feelings have grown into sympathy with those of his remote fore- fathers, built for himself a shooting-lodge entirely according to his own fancy. " The house itself will not be large," he said, " but I am determined to have one large room in it." That was quite a mediaeval idea, and the way he carried it out was this: He built his one room lofty and vast, with a stone chimney- Autun, 205 piece huge enough to carry life-size Gothic statues for ornaments, and round this room he built little cells for sleeping, in deference to modern notions. In practical use the great room was a continual satisfaction to him. In wet weather the party could meet in it with- out a sense of confinement, in hot weather it was comparatively cool and airy. This luxury of space the mediaeval people enjoyed in one room at least, but their houses were ill con- trived in other respects. It is astonishing how they wasted room when they had little to spare, and how completely they neglected the important rule that every chamber should be accessible without passing through another. I do not believe that there is a mediaeval house in existence at all comparable to the best modern ones for ingenuity of internal arrange- ment. Even the stone corkscrew staircases, so common as to be almost universal in medi- aeval houses, are a most inconvenient kind of staircase in use. As every step narrows till it comes to nothing at the pillar, it is of use only near the wall, and two people cannot conveniently meet upon it. For carrying large objects, such as pieces of furniture, a corkscrew stair is the worst of all. From the 206 A ttt tin. absence of proper landings there is an awk- wardness at every door on the successive stones. The only real advantages of these stairs are that they occupy a minimum of space on the ground plan, and that they pro- duce a picturesque external effect when they are built out in little towers with pepper-box roofs. Sometimes the stair-turret is half lost in the main building, sometimes it is entirely absorbed and only the top of it visible. Some- thing, however, is generally made of it in any case. In the house in the Rue Cocand, men- tioned above, the stair-turret is behind, and only the top of it is seen ; but it shows well in the back yard, where it gives a good finish to a picturesque accumulation of build- ings on a small scale. In this house, as in others of the same class, there is a predomi- nant architectural feeling (as distinguished from the business spirit of a mere builder), which manifests itself in matters of detail. There is hardly a bit of stone or wood in the house, dating from its origin, that is not treated with some intention of care and taste. In the region about the Cathedral there are many good specimens of the old town-house 207 which would deserve to be illustrated. One of them, belonging to the presiding judge, is like two distinct buildings. It has a genuine mediaeval front to a court near one street, and an interesting Renaissance front towards another. The house occupied by M. Froment, the well known artist, is entirely mediaeval. Some of the houses built against the town wall have turned the old military towers to account by making rooms in them. I know a lady who has a pretty little boudoir in one of these round towers, and amongst the arrange- ments of feminine taste and comfort it is easy to forget the original intention of the building till one is reminded of it by the thickness of the wall as revealed by the depth of the win- dow embrasure. The reader must not suppose that the Gothic houses about the Cathedral are rich in any striking architectural adorn- ment. They are generally plain and substan- tial dwellings, with a few mouldings about window and doorway, and perhaps an isolated bit of sculpture here and there. With a single exception, they are not on a large scale. The exception is the Hotel de Beauchamp, which was purchased a few years ago by an important archaeological society the Societe 208 Autun. Eduenne and classed as an historical monu- ment, which insures its future preservation. It is a part, and only a comparatively small and unimportant part, of what was at one time an extensive Gothic palace. It belonged to Nicholas Rolin, Chancellor of Burgundy, who died in it in the year 1461. The main char- acteristics of it are a very highly pitched roof, lofty rooms, and one or two good chimney- pieces. It was occupied by work-people before the Societe Eduenne bought it, and since the change of ownership it has been cleaned and carefully repaired, but not restored in any destructive sense. The greatest objection to what has been done is the substitution of a new roof of blue slate for the old common red tiles, which gave a pleasant warm contrast to the gray stone of the building. Blue slate is now extensively used in the old French provincial towns, which in the days before railways were happily preserved from it by their distance from slate quarries. It is at once the neatest, the coldest, and the hardest- looking of all materials for roofs. The bour- geois mind delights in its neatness, but it chills the heart of an artist. The roof of the Hotel de Beauchamp is so